The Public Domain is a 2015 Drama film set in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The film follows characters whose lives were impacted by the collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge on August 1, 2007. The story takes place seven years later. It is centered around a bar in a Polish neighborhood named The Public Domain. The time is around the feast of Saint Casimir (March 4.)
The film was shot on location in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Budget came from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, through a reimbursement program administered by the Minnesota Film & TV board Independent Filmmaker Project Minnesota. To qualify, films have to be set in the state and/or have a strong Minnesota focus.
I caught the movie at the red carpet debut at the Lagoon in Uptown Minnapolis. I have seen a number of red carpet previews in Westwood. This one was rather subdued by comparison. The lobby of the Lagoon was actually quite intimate and casual.
We were interested in the movie, as a friend was the belly dancing teacher. The character of Linda Basili has to perform at the Northeast arts council show, and is an act of bravery on her part.
The movie is slow to start, even with the drama of the collapse of the bridge. In the Q and A afterwards, directory Patrick Coyle said he used it to give a common thread to the characters. He also stated that people all remember where we were when the bridge collapsed. I came home from work that day, feeling like I wanted to watch TV news. It was strange because I ordinarily never do, Plus it was a beautiful, but hot summer afternoon and a good time to be outside. I was stunned to see the bridge with cars on it settled into the river.
The drama in the film events seems to have little to do with the daily lives of the characters. It really only seems to come together near the end as you connect the tiny threads of behavior to actions on the August Wednesday 4 years before.
One of the characters likes to draw, and is quite good at it. I did not recognize the gold lacquer tipped charcoal pencils he favored. I did notice in the interview scene at the Kramarczuk deli, that the pencils in the can between the characters kept changing. It seemed fitting that one could find a job making Polish sausages and cleaning "meat slurry" in Northeast Minneapolis. One of the top ten worst pickup lines might be, "Let us go eat that the Kramarczuk deli. Maybe we will eat one of the sausages I stuffed."
One of the funniest scenes is set at the Northside St. Paul Steeple People group home. A sweet young female character has Tourette syndrome, and fires of a stream of N and F words.
In the Public Domain bar itself, I thought I could smell the mixture of old wood, old beer, old smoke, and that industrial dish detergent that all bars seem to use.
I thought the story of the Ad exec having an affair with the casting agent could have stood on its own. The character of David, played by Mark Beninghofen has somewhere to go and he wraps it up nicely with his antagonist by telling him that it is not his first rodeo.
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