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synopsis
Living alone in a house near the woods, a young man spends his days feeding a bottomless pit in the forest with the essence of life itself-the blood of animals. This has, over the course of his vocation with nature, formed a kind of metaphysical connection, whereby any harm that comes to it is immediately reflected back onto him in the way of injury. In these strange days, the man tries desperately to maintain this connection, as he believes it is the only thing keeping him alive, while at the same time struggling to maintain his humanity, as the whims of nature grow all the more horrifying.
when a deer dies in the woods...
the philosophy of Duplicitous
From a young age, I've always been fascinated with nature, particularly the ambivalence of it, the fact that nature itself does not care whether we grow old, die young, or are never born at all.
In many ways this film is about that very concept, the idea that when a deer dies in the woods, its fellow deer do not hold vigil for the fallen animal, nor do they shed a single tear from their vacant eyes. The idea that when we die, our bodies reunite with the earth, breaking down and decomposing into the basic components of life, which will eventually give way to the birthing of a new animal entirely. It was this cycle I was concerned with when making Duplicitous, the endless journey of life and death. I wanted to represent death (and by extension life) in the most lucid of ways I could imagine. This is why I chose not to add any music to the film, why moments sometimes play out in long, unbroken takes. In my admittedly juvenile opinion, this is life, a long, unbroken take, a chaotic series of incoherent events, strung together by our mind's tendency to weave patterns.
-Quinn Wheatley
meet
the
crew
quinn wheatley
kristen wheatley
writer, director, actor, and editor
assistant director, camera operator, and emotional support
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