Every young filmmaker yearns to get the financing to make their feature directorial debut, and the current cinematic landscape, where many studios and independent financiers are giving these burgeoning talents the resources to realize their dreams, it is easier than ever. It’s rare that the results are anything less than utterly impressive, and many of us are a lot more conditioned to give these young directors the benefit of the doubt, since their work is often the outcome of a labour of love. When it comes to independent filmmaking, it’s rare to find any instance where we can say resources were wasted – but there certainly are a few where we have to wonder whether or not it needed to be made. Ham on Rye, the first film by Tyler Taormina, is a bewildering experience, and while calling this a bad film is both inappropriate and incorrect, there is something that doesn’t quite make sense. Some have cited this as an intentional choice, others have said it’s the result of poor filmmaking. My personal interpretation is that this film is incredibly ambitious, but features slightly too much audacity than it knew what to do with. Complex and surreal, but also puzzling in the way that sometimes may not work for a director’s debut feature (with only a handful of prominent filmmakers succeeding at being so experimental from the start of their career), Ham on Rye is a mixed bag of a film, one that rewards patience, but also doesn’t do much to assuage the slight irritations that come about when the viewer is making their way through the hellish landscape Taormina is inspiring. It’s not clear what inspired the director to make this film, but what is certainly clear is that, without a doubt, he took a few risks – and whether or not it worked out is up to the individual’s viewer’s interpretation, if it is even at all possible to wrap one’s head around this very strange but oddly captivating film.

Summarizing the premise of Ham on Rye is a pointless exercise, since it doesn’t really have much of a story – it is set somewhere in the American Midwest, in a small town without many occupants (the kind where everyone knows their neighbour). The sense of community extends to the children, who take part in a bizarre ritual once they reach a certain age, whereby they go to a local delicatessen, enjoy a hearty meal, before descending into a flurry of surreal conversations, off-kilter dance numbers, and eventually total disintegration. This moment happens about halfway through Ham on Rye, and it’s the last moment anything makes the slightest sense. From this point onwards, the film becomes a series of short moments that are disjointed from the narrative as a whole, and seem to function solely as a means to confuse the viewer even more, which may be an appealing concept in theory – especially in an artistic landscape where the term “Lynchian” is not only applied to nearly every work that steps out of what is considered conventional, but seems to be a guiding force for younger filmmakers, who seem to misunderstand why David Lynch and his peculiar brand of weirdness have been so widely embraced over the decades – but doesn’t quite succeed in the final outcome, since there is a lot of work that still needed to be done. Simply trying to convince the viewer that what they’re seeing has some deeper meaning, which in reality is far from true in most instances, can cause unnecessary challenges, and cause a film like Ham on Rye to settle for much less than it was capable of doing, making it doubly frustrating, since not only are we getting a film that seems to be too intent on befuddling the viewers, it squanders the potential that was well within its reach.

It’s almost undeniable that Ham on Rye is a frustrating film – there is a small sub-genre of films that are intentionally challenging by design, and are formed in such a way that the audience is made to feel as if they’re being mentally oppressed, forced into a position of both despair and oddly-formed curiosity, which is something the director does very well with this film. The debate isn’t whether it fits into this mould, but rather how effective it is when doing so. Taormina has a very distinct visual and narrative style, one that hasn’t often been seen before in younger filmmakers – and while it does show exceptional promise, it also points towards an aimlessness in his direction that is perhaps not quite as successful as it could’ve been, especially considering this was coming from a lineage of films that are easy enough to alter to his specific vision. For the most part, Taormina designed Ham on Rye to be a coming-of-age story – the entire first half is populated by a large group of teenagers on their way to becoming adults (dressed in their finest vintage clothing to help them on the journey), while the second half is almost entirely void of the same charm, becoming increasingly dark as it goes on, which isn’t the most effective approach when you’re trying to give the audience something to hold onto. To its credit, the film is unforgettable – its approach to telling this story is quite unique, even if it doesn’t seem to have the most solid handle on the material it’s built on.

Trying to find meaning in Ham on Rye seems like a fool’s errand, since its narrative ambiguities could easily be attributed to the fact that this film is trying to employ a surrealist approach to the material, which isn’t necessarily a bad decision, just one I’m not sure the director was fully capable of realizing to its full potential. There is something about this film that does certainly pique our curiosity – a sense of dark, deceptive despair that doesn’t abate, and instead serves to unsettle us even more, to the point where classifying this film as a comedy seems wildly inappropriate, since the humour is a tool used to carefully place us in an uncanny version of the world. On this fact alone, Ham on Rye is something of a success, with the narrative structure and content being overall quite impressive. It’s in the execution that the film seems to falter – it’s not clear if its a case of the film itself just being too lacklustre in realizing its own potential, or if the director just took too many bold risks that didn’t pay off in the way he was expecting. The problems ultimately don’t outweigh the positive aspects, since there was a great deal of potential underpinning this film. The challenge comes in how it didn’t quite realize all of it constructively and with the meaningful understanding of its themes that it had the capacity for. Ultimately, the film succeeds at being a strange and disconcerting experience, so if this is what Taormina was aiming for, he certainly did achieve it. In other areas, the film was lacking, which is unfortunate but not entirely unexpected, considering the nature of the production. One can hope these flaws were simply teething problems rather than definitive of the director’s style, which has a ton of potential, and his shortcomings are nothing that a bit of experience will be able to rectify.