The Blue Hour
The Los Angeles River—destitute, paved, forsaken—is the cradle of L.A. life. Centuries ago it sustained Native Americans, then lured Spaniards, then finally birthed a metropolis that sprawled and morphed so extravagantly that people forgot where it started from.
The filmmaker Eric Nazarian, in his magnifcent and subtle feature, The Blue Hour, restores the river to its rightful place in the soul of the city. Weaving together four disparate tales along its concrete banks, Eric gives us something Hollywood often seems incapable of conjuring: the authentic L.A., the misperceived L.A., the L.A. of ingenuity and survival and heart, the L.A. of the trenches and margins. Through his lens this forlorn body of water is timeless and universal, our common ground. It is the giver and taker of life, an oasis, a temptation, a canvas, a hideout, the wellspring from which all the city’s dreams and losses flow. With only a few minutes of dialogue on this hour-and-a-half DVD, The Blue Hour is all about what is left unsaid, the truths that collect like silt in our bones.
Despite operating on a shoestring, Eric reels in a surprisingly accomplished cast, extracting performances—including a grieving, and ostensibly Armenian, Alyssa Milano—that defy their popular images. It is easy to see why such proficient actors agreed to put their faith in him. Eric has created something gorgeous and haunting, lush and spare, intimate and epic. The Blue Hour aches in all the right places, and offers comfort, a hand, a caress, just when we need it, too.