The All Golden: The Polyamorous Soap Opera

A Dream Soap

Filmmaker Nathaniel Wilson wrote a press blurb for his 2024 film The All Golden: The Polyamorous Soap Operat, which reads:

"Our feature film The All Golden is having an exciting, totally independent distribution, only through the enthusiasm of curious programmers, and the unique spaces and institutions where films are discovered (virtual spaces into real ones). Our current run presents each night as a different new way to experience the movie - w/ Special Guest Moderators, Interactive Gallery Components, and pairings with other exciting new work."

Does this sound at all interesting? I'm allergic to a share of art-happening stuff (Mike Bilandic chronicles the current scene better than anyone out there now), but The All Golden I can dig, what with its prompt to force a construction of narrative in my own brain, or not. (See the onscreen title a little less than half-an-hour in, which announces "Part Two [?], Ein Traumspiel," or "A Dream Play," the German title for Strindberg's play — Kubrick adapted Schnitzler's Traumnovelle or "Dream Story" into Eyes Wide Shut.) The All Golden exists lost in the fragmentation and aggressive capabilities of modern editing. A script readthrough mentions the discovery of lost Nazi gold (a thread buried within Godard's Film Socialisme).

A viewing of Wilson's film has much to do with a zone-out via the supplement of one's choice. Somewhere in the back of the mind, or during REM sleep, different connections draw themselves. After a good night's sleep one will come back to The All Golden, film literally re-playing or not. •

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