Viaticum: A Comedy on the Things We Take (Down) With Us on the Way Out

Derek Frey’s Viaticum is a 14-minute dark comedy about dying while religious. Co-written by The Minor Prophets (David Amadio, Gil Damon, and Steve Kuzmick), who also form the majority of the four-member cast, the film is funny and atmospherically disquieting. 

Amadio plays Jason, amateur saucier and dutiful son of Albert (Damon), a dying man in need of a priest to perform the last rites. Thus enters Father Kettinger (Kuzmick), introduced in a brief scene with Jason that is brimming with farcical sincerity. Meeting Nurse (and Coach) Auerbach, (Kathleen Kozack), he immediately has a bone to pick with her. Their differences only find more fuel when Kettinger is willing to move past a murder confession.

There is a claustrophobia in the frames, brought on by the confines of the low-ceilinged room struggling to contain the outsized hostilities between the nurse and the priest, and there, looming in the foreground, the bare, dying body. Appropriately, Jason remains crouched for nearly the entire scene—he is not the point, and neither is his father. Ironically, the nurse is as, if not more, invested a catholic than the priest himself. As they butt heads over what is or is not acceptable in the eyes of their god, father and son vacillate in and out of relevance, until finally, the violent climax enacts a reshuffle that the players are not meant to survive. 

The best of the film’s comicality is reserved in the performances, in that aforementioned farce of sincerity, especially visible between Jason and Father Kettinger. Auerbach, impelled by duty to remain quiet, is nonetheless amusing to watch in the background as her face travels a range of emotions of mostly the same classification: annoyed, disapproving, and disdainful. Kettinger and Auerbach’s battle is written like a rom-com, only to be supplanted by shock and comedy. As the end approaches, it falls a little short on the latter. The drama is far more watchable; unfolding in black and white, there seems to exist something coiled and waiting. The feeling is reinforced by what we do not see: the part of the room on the other side of the bed. Indeed, the lighting and concomitant shadows play an interesting role in emphasising the claustrophobia, leaking in from the doorway directly onto the ceiling. There is something about it that evokes the entropy of death, spilling and not spilling in odd, heavy ways. 

Viaticum is interestingly designed. The trivialities of living go on as they must in the midground, and life is changed every moment while we do not pay attention to it. In the meantime, there’s bread and sauce. 

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