Ben (Grant Rosenmeyer) is not okay. His wife and artistic collaborator Sarah (Reina Hardesty) died suddenly, leaving him in a state of shock. He forgets to eat, he forgets to sleep. Stuck in a neverending stupor, he forgets to take care of himself. When his concerned sister Gloria (Lucy DeVito) and her husband Tom (Nican Robinson) leave for a short trip, she puts Ben on the front lawn to get some fresh air \u2013 only that’s where he stays for the several days while she is gone, unmotivated to move out of the sun or back into the comforts of home.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His grief over the loss of his wife leads him to search for something more \u2013 something bigger than all of this. He finds an enigmatic figure on the dark web named Mealworm (Paul Raci), who promises to teach his would-be student the so-called secret art of human flight. Ben\u2019s guru shows up at his doorstep with even tougher training demands than he originally anticipated. Still, as Gloria grows concerned and a local detective suspects his motives, Ben must choose whether to believe the stranger now living in his house or those concerned for his safety.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Director H.P. Mendoza\u2019s \u201cThe Secret Art of Human Flight\u201d is more of a journey through grief than the discovery of human flight. Through old videos and flashbacks, we see glimpses of Ben\u2019s life with Sarah, the good parts, their silly creative process when working on children\u2019s books, and the tougher parts of any relationship \u2013 the moments when things feel out of sync when your partner blindsides you with news or leaves a conversation in a huff.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yet it\u2019s because of these moments playing repeatedly in Ben\u2019s mind that we get the sense of who this couple was, the upbeat companion Ben lost, and what he stands to lose when Mealworm tells him to leave it all behind. Ben is almost constantly wrestling with his emotions, grief over losing Sarah, hesitant faith in Mealworm\u2019s unorthodox coaching, and eagerness to find solace in a world that no longer makes sense to him. Mendoza balances Ben\u2019s shifting moods with a sense of tenderness and earnestness, following Rosenmeyer\u2019s performance closely to capture every nuance, from numb stares off to the distance to the anger he feels when it seems like Mealworm has betrayed Ben.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Written by Jesse Orenshein, the script for \u201cThe Secret Art of Human Flight\u201d is just as inventive as it is emotional. He creates a shared dynamic for Ben and Sarah that feels more realistic than idealistic and gets the audience on board with Ben\u2019s impossible quest, even if one\u2019s alarm bells go off during Mealworm\u2019s pitch. Like \u201cAlice in Wonderland,\u201d we follow Ben down the rabbit hole through an adventure that\u2019s both strange and clarifying.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Orenshein also creates Mealworm\u2019s unusual training regimen and belief system through the chapters of a self-help book he sends Ben, asking him to jump over shards of glass, sleep on his roof, lose 18 pounds, and talk like a bird for a week in the hopes to teach him how to fly. Raci\u2019s character acts as if Wonderland\u2019s caterpillar and the Cheshire Cat became a life coach, and the actor looks to be having the time of his career, making weird requests with an amused smile, pushing Ben to his limit over and over again. The only note that rings false is the character of Detective Reyes (Rosa Arredondo), who telegraphs her investigation of Ben a little too clearly, almost villainously so.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ben (Grant Rosenmeyer) is not okay. His wife and artistic collaborator Sarah (Reina Hardesty) died suddenly, leaving him in a state of shock. He forgets to eat, he forgets to sleep. Stuck in a neverending stupor, he forgets to take care of himself. When his concerned sister Gloria (Lucy DeVito) and her husband Tom (Nican …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[45],"class_list":["post-1421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drama-movies","tag-drama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}