A Date With Destiny

Thy Will Be Done Opens The Ventura Film Fest On a Note of Triumph
Ventura County Reporter, 3/19/09

The Ventura Film Festival has been a long time coming – far longer than the wait for those who’ve anticipated it, far longer even than the years festival chairman Lorenzo DeStefano has spent in planning it. The festival’s date with destiny – 26 March 2009 – remains inextricably tied to a winter’s day in 1994 when a wave of violence and antipathy crested and broke, forever altering the trajectories of the handful of lives in its purview and setting the stage for the festival’s centerpiece film, Thy Will Be Done.

The film tells the story of Kevin Natale, a Ventura native who was on that day an active, ordinary fourteen year-old boy preparing for a league basketball game when twenty-one year-old and deeply disturbed neighbor Bryan Adams burst through the front door, pistol in hand -- obsessed with the idea of settling a largely imagined score – and opened fire. Though Kevin survived the bullet intended to take his life, he was left paralyzed.

Directed by Brooks Institute graduate Jacob K. Cunningham, the feature documentary describes not only a tragic and transformational moment, but traces the aftermath of that moment and the ongoing transformation in a powerfully human story of courage and pathos and everyday humanity.

DeStefano’s vision for the festival centers on a theme of Local Voices/Global Visions – supporting the idea that cinema offers a flexible frame and a stylistic alchemy in which even the smallest, or most local stories can offer profound insight into a larger, culturally universal experience of the human condition. Thy Will Be Done deftly accomplishes just that ethic in its deeply personal narrative and the transcendent examples of not just Kevin’s life, but of all those whose lives connected to his and were likewise irrevocably transformed.

At the film’s first public screening, Director Cunningham was unaware that in attendance were DeStefano and members of the film festival’s board; during the post-film q&a, when the filmmaker was asked what was next for the project, the festival chairman stood and invited the project to become part of the festival – to thunderous audience acclaim. Acknowledging the drama of the moment, DeStefano notes, “In that moment we knew what we were about as a film festival, and I think Jacob knew what he was about as a filmmaker.” While the festival found exactly the sort of story it was designed to champion, the film found the next step in meeting an ever-growing audience.

Thy Will Be Done was captured over the better part of a year’s shooting and editing; originally intended as a documentary short, the richness of the themes and of the story that needed to be told simply outgrew such a limited frame. As the project evolved it proved to be not only a proscenium for events already in play, but also a catalyst for revelation and new action – as when, in an onscreen moment, Kevin realizes his wish to connect with Joyce Adams, the mother of his would-be assassin – who is bound more tightly to the tragedy than perhaps even Kevin in his ever-present wheelchair, or her own son, who is serving a life sentence for the crime at Folsom Prison. The film makes good on that realization, in a powerful act of compassion, communion and forgiveness that simply could not have been scripted, and in a way that unequivocally validates the power of cinema – exactly as celebrated by the festival ethic. It’s in that moment of forgiveness that perhaps, after fifteen years, Joyce’s own healing can finally begin.

A deeply spiritual man, Kevin’s commitment to forgiveness proved less an act of choice than a commitment to the faith by which he’s always lived. “I’ve always known that God had a plan for me,” he notes, “and that’s more clear to me now than ever. Bryan had a part in God’s plan for me, too, so of course I had to forgive him.”

While tragedy figures prominently in the narrative of Thy Will Be Done, the film is ultimately not about tragedy – the narrative leaves tragedy behind just as fully as Kevin can be seen to have left it in life, moving to address themes that touch us all regardless of our station in life and our luck, for better or worse. “Everyone faces something in life that can stop you, can hold you back,” Kevin observes, “But it’s how you pick yourself up and move on afterwards that shows who you are, and what you’re made of.” It’s in Kevin’s willingness and ability not only to move on but to express it for Cunningham’s camera – along with the film’s other principals, including his mother, his sister, and Joyce Adams, caught between her perceived destruction of both boys’ lives – that Thy Will Be Done finds its beating heart.

It’s that beating heart that DeStefano first went looking for with the Ventura fest, finding it not only in Thy Will Be Done,” but in the fest’s 72 other films, in a wide ranging catalogue designed to express the well publicized ideal of Real people, true stories, new cinema. Hand in hand with that ethic was the determination that the Ventura Film Festival be a unifying event, inclusive to people of all walks of life. “You’ll never see a red carpet here, as long as I’m involved with this festival,” DeStefano affirms. “No red carpets, no VIP lists – the exclusive ethic of so many other festivals is exactly the opposite of what we’re doing here.

Inclusion is an ethic that resonated for Kevin as well, whose task, like anyone’s, has been to live the best life he can. “Sure, people could look at me and go ‘poor guy, wow,” he notes, “But I see it all as a matter of perspective. When I visited Shriner’s Hospital I met a bunch of kids who have nothing, no family, no homes, and it made me realize it’s all relative – by that standard I am so blessed, with a great family, great friends, lots of love. Like anyone, I just want to get the most out of life that I can. People want to take inspiration from me, and that’s fine – by the same token, I take my inspiration from others; I find myself surrounded by people who make me want to be a better man.”

The notion is absolutely in play in the festival environment, where films unspool from every corner of the earth, expressing themes and ideas representative of all walks of life – from squatters in the ruins of Havana to Indian peasants striving for clean water against the interests of the multi-national industrial machine, to the militant brilliance of legendary native American activist John Trudell. For three days audiences are brought into the new perspectives of new worlds; seventy-three stories of hope and heartbreak, of tragedy and triumph, of desperation and inspiration; each a call to action on a scale according to its ability to resonate with its audience and according to the sensitivity and sensibilities of that audience.

“We live in such a sound-byte era,” DeStefano explains, “We have this tendency to reduce complex cultures and ideas to mere icon status. You can describe Cuba with a communist star and a few cigars, but you will absolutely fail to capture its essence, to even communicate an idea about it that has any lasting value.” He goes on to explain that it’s within the power of cinema – with a film in the festival catalogue like Havana: The New Art of Making Ruins – to dissolve that icon over a relatively short interval, leaving audiences with a vastly deeper understanding about what it is to actually live in Cuba today.

Understanding became the touchstone of Kevin as well, as the cinematic project of his own life reached fruition. “I can’t comprehend what God’s thinking might be – it’s so much bigger than I am. I can only accept it, and be willing to be an instrument of that plan.” He acknowledges that plan now looks clearer than ever. “What I’m stoked about is that with my story I’m leaving a fingerprint on this world – a little statement of who I am, and of what I have to say.”

As the festival’s debut draws nearer, each involved looks ahead with the eyes of experience, anticipating the fruition of work that has been years in the making. Asked what’s next for Thy Will Be Done, Cunningham just shakes his head. “I’m amazed and grateful that it’s come this far,” he notes. “We have no idea where it goes from here. It’s basically out of our hands now – the next step is kind of up to the audience.” DeStefano agrees: “We can only take it so far, and then we let it go, to unfold as it will; it’s not easy, but it’s the same for all of us, from where I sit, or for a filmmaker, or for the audience – we take what we’re given, we do the best we can with it, then we hand it off to another.”