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DIRECTED BY: W.M. Weikart

FEATURING: Michael Thomas Santos, Danielle Meyer

PLOT: Jacob signs up for a dangerous psychological treatment to overcome his anger issues and finds himself trapped within a small home.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Soul to Squeeze doesn’t wear its metaphor on its sleeve so much as encase the protagonist. This narrative framework allows for a psychological deep-dive which proffers as much ambiguity as it does clarity.

COMMENTS: A young fellow emerges from debris on the roadside. He’s bleary-eyed, but looks content—even happy. In fact, he’s doing so well that, when a kindly passerby offers help, he politely declines. The preceding ordeal nearly broke him, for this trash pile is the site of a rebirth. As he limps to the roadside, it is clear that our protagonist, Jacob, has had his soul squeezed, but not how you might think.

Certainly not how I thought, until some days after watching the movie when the title’s implications finally became clear. Weikart uses a number of tools to form the narrative, but a television documentary (which seems to be the only channel available where Jacob’s locked himself away for “treatment”) is nearly as omnipresent as the allegorical house the film was shot in. Alongside Jacob, we learn about the mysteries and wonders of the eye: its nerves, cones, strata, apertures, and, most importantly, the aqueous humour. You’ll develop an understanding and appreciation of this unlikely organ from watching Soul to Squeeze, if nothing else.

Jacob’s ordeal begins immediately upon signing the medical release for an unclear procedure—someone, or some force, locks the exit the moment he lifts the pen from the contract line. As Jacob angrily goes through his routines in confinement, he encounters an array of characters who probably aren’t there, though it’s difficult to be certain. (Surely there isn’t a kitchen game show titled “Don’t Fuck This Up!” lying in wait to pounce on the unsuspecting breakfaster.) As the story unfolds, and Jacob’s psychological journey dives deeper into the source of his omnipresent anger, the surrounding pressure of recollection and contemplation forces him (and us) to focus on his true ailment.

The documentary narrator explains: we know much about the hardware involved inside the eye, but there’s no concrete theory as to why it all works. As with the eye (a window to the soul, we’ve been told), so with the mind. Weikart’s one-set drama, putting actor Michael Thomas Santos through the wringer, features much that is obvious. But like an eye (which comes up as much in this review almost as much as in the film), it transcends the sum of its parts through an alchemical process that cannot be easily dissected into its constituent parts without destroying it. Apologies if I’ve veered too far into bio-philosophical rambling, but that’s just the kind of thing Soul to Squeeze catalyzes. With a little focus, life’s debris can be put into perspective, and you are free to move on in the world.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“There’s a haunting stillness to the production design—this is not a surrealist explosion of dream logic, but something more intimate and grounded… for those willing to surrender to its slow, aching rhythm and deeply personal approach, it offers something rare: a film that doesn’t just explore the mind—it mirrors it” — Chris Jones, Overly Honest Reviews (contemporaneous)