Written and directed by Liz Manashil
Starring Ann Dowd, Ray Santiago and Allison Tolman
Running time: 1 hour and 16 minutes

The Man Who Broke the World
by Anthony Glassman

Four years ago, the universe cracked. It tilted on its axis; its hinges came unstuck. Pandora’s box was opened and, instead of all the evils of the world flying out, all the good in the world flew in, never to be seen again.

Yes, on January 10, 2016, David Bowie died. The Space Oddity blasted off with Major Tom, the Goblin King juggled his last crystal ball, and Monty lost the last big bet.

It was a terrible day, full of tears and gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes and tearing of hair and the imposition of sack-cloth and Ashes to Ashes, but it also opened something, a floodgate of the best and brightest leaving us, a few at a decent age, but many others far too soon. Just in 2016, we also lost Prince, Leonard Cohen and George Michael. Two of those three make me just not want to go on living in a world without them, and I didn’t actually mind George Michael either.

Since then, Tom Petty, Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington, Chris Cornell, Gregg Allman, Avicii, Dolores O’Riordan, Aretha Franklin, Roy Clark, Stan Lee and Keith Flint have all shuffled off this mortal coil, two at their own hands and two others thrown in just to be fair to anyone who actually liked Roy Clark or the Allman Brothers. I mean, we all liked Roy Clark when we were little, didn’t we?

At a more fundamental level, however, David Bowie’s death broke the universe. Just ask poor Edward (Ray Santiago), who falls into a wormhole that drops him into a vaguely dystopian future in Liz Manashil’s Speed of Life. One minute, he’s arguing with his girlfriend June (Allison Tolman, who stars in the current series Emergence, making me wonder where the little robot girl was all through this movie), and the next, he’s plunked out 30 years in the future, still in June’s (Ann Dowd) living room.

It’s not his film, though. The film is about June far more than about Edward, and how his callous joking nature at her shock and dismay learning about Bowie’s death separated them emotionally (and physically) for 30 years.

Thrown in are a love interest for the older June, and her boyfriend’s daughter meets a nice young man as well, but yes, it’s all about the Dowd. She is understated excellence, and she and Tolman play the same character adeptly. That casting is a joy, as Manashil has two, not-thin, age appropriate women playing June. (It would have been far more marketable to have June portrayed by a 20-year old and a 30-year old, since 30 is 60 for women in Hollywood.)

The film itself is not the deepest, most meaningful one, but there are plenty of metaphors to be gleaned. There are questions about the actual laws of space-time that go unanswered, but I can’t really go into them without spoiling the heck out of the movie, so I will just let them pass while giving them angry-nerd glances.

While it is truly tragic to lose so many visionaries in so short a time, just consider what the comforting memes of the day told us: In the billions of years the universe has existed, we were alive at the same time as David Bowie, and that’s a wondrous thing.