Death, decay and dysfunction in Shawn Snyder's dark buddy movie, TO DUST

Decomposition is paramount in the new and very dank/oddball growth-through-friendship movie, TO DUST, co-written (with Jason Begue) and directed by first-time full-length filmmaker Shawn Snyder (shown below).

In it, a cantor from an Orthodox Jewish community in upstate New York who has just lost his wife to cancer, finds himself coming apart at the seams, prone to nightmares involving death and decay, and unable to function as father to his two sons.

Because this religious community has, as is typical, cut itself off from as much as possible of the remaining (and what some might call "normal") world, our cantor cannot find proper help from his own highly traditional and strictured community and so must go elsewhere.

This is not so easy, thanks to the many rules and regulations involved in Orthodox living. Simply speaking to a woman in an office outside the community, for instance, in a no-no. So the cantor, Shmuel (played by Géza Röhrig, at right on poster, top, and below, whom you'll remember from his commanding performance in the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar-winner, Son of Saul), rather like a bull in a china shop, barges his way into the classroom and the life of a local community-college science teacher named Albert (Matthew Broderick, at left on poster, top, and below), whom he then forces to explain to him, in minute detail, how a corpse decays.

If this sounds like one of the least believable meet-cutes in the history of cinema, well, it is. But is is also just bizarre and bleak enough to maintain one's initial interest. And if these two characters are barely developed -- Shmuel has but a single characteristic, grief; while Albert seems a lonely outsider who, in the comfort of his home, wears a woman's housedress -- both Broderick and Röhrig are consummate professionals who bring every bit of their talent to the proceedings and manage, at least while we're watching them, to create life and truth here.

The movie's insistence on exploring decay and decomposition -- initially via pigs and finally at a human corpse farm outside Knoxville, Tennessee -- may turn off more than a few viewers. Those who stick with the film will get the expected feel-good resolution  that, even though it arrives via means as bleak as all else here, seems no more believable that the movie's meet-cute beginning. And the relationship between the two men is so unbelievable that it must be taken -- whole-hog, so to speak -- on faith. Thank god for Broderick and Hashem for Röhrig, as these two guys do all they can to make the trip witty and enjoyable.

The supporting cast has little to do but certainly does it well enough, while the technical aspects of the movie, while seldom belying the small budget, are handled professionally. And if you are one of those viewers (unlike me) who disdains profanity, here's the film for you: In the disc on which I viewed To Dust, all of the curse words on the soundtrack had been bleeped out!

From Good Deed Entertainment and running 91 minutes (in the version I saw, at least; the IMDB has the film clocking in at 105 minutes), To Dust opens here in South Florida this Friday, March 15, in the Miami area at the AMC Aventura 24 and AMC Sunset Place, in Fort Lauderdale at The Classic Gateway, in Boca Raton at the Regal Shadowood and Living Room Theaters, in Palm Beach Gardens at Cobb's Downtown 16; in Tamarac at The Last Picture Show, and at the Movies of Delray and the Movies of Lake Worth.