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Haiku Tunnel (August 7, 2002)
“Haiku Tunnel” was originally created as a performance piece and the film itself more or less replicates that experience, with Spalding Gray being the most pervasive influence here. (He’s thanked in the credits.) The filmmakers, brothers Jacob and Josh Kornbluth, concentrate on Josh’s days as a temporary secretary and the emotional turmoil he experiences when he goes full time for a law firm. Though it’s a comedy and there are some clever observations about corporate life, it’s plain that Josh Kornbluth is a very depressed individual, a fact he spends the entire film trying to rationalize. The problem is that he doesn’t seem to want to escape from his depression; if being a temp allows him a freedom that ultimately leads to a void, then going full time constricts him to an impotence that causes him to disconnect. It’s a cyclical problem he wants us to empathize with but it’s nearly impossible given his whiny insistence that it’s a viable lifestyle chosen of his free will. The Kornbluths (and their co-scenarist John Bellucci) concentrate so heavily on Josh’s misery that whatever attention they give to the supporting cast is in the form of caricature and condescension; only June Lomena as another secretary shows any notion of individuality.
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