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Synopsis
Adam has written an allegorical and fictional new musical about a Yom Kippur service that goes off the rails and transforms into an attempted therapy session for a powerful and controversial unelected bureaucrat. The work extensively quotes the renowned writer Rebecca Garten whose permission Adam must attain before proceeding. Skeptical from the start, Rebecca agrees to attend a reading of the play before deciding whether or not to support it.
Press
Press
Lost Cause is a very distinctive, very smart, very intelligent, very unusual, very creative, at times maddening, but always compelling, always challenging, personal work of art that attempts to make some kind of sense out of the tumultuous times in which we are all now living... I would definitely recommend Lost Cause to movie audiences craving something outside of the multiplex movie-fare because it is so different, so heartfelt and so obviously a labor of love.
Tim Sika, At The Movies With Tim Sika
A meta-narrative exploration of identity, community, and ritual.
Dennis Harvey, 48 Hills
Writer, director, and actor Adam Kritzer’s Lost Cause is a singular work of art. A meta-narrative, the film functions as much as a multi-media art piece as it does a musical. It does not shy away from this blending of forms; instead, it revels in its pliability using it to examine its subjects’ inner psyches and the broader consequences of their actions. Lost Cause is neither farce nor foil — it is a clear artistic exploration of the unanswerable questions facing our country today.
Anisse Elias, SFJFF
in the future, critics will write thinkpieces on the question, “What was the first ‘American New Wave’ film? When did ‘NonDÄ“’ really start?” but for me, in my capacity as audience member, it began here... what I was “looking for” was simple: Will Lost Cause live up to the NonDÄ“ mantra, “ambitiously-authored cinema”? If it does that, I supposed, it will be a success, for the filmmaker, of course, but also for us all... I assure you now, Lost Cause is ambitiously-authored indeed... It speaks volumes about the artistry of Lost Cause that it gives me so much to process, even two days later. Too many filmmakers would have succumbed to the laziness of neat, black-and-white exposition of what’s wrong with America, who is to blame, and what we should do about them. Not Adam Kritzer... Lost Cause inundates the audience with ideas in the best sense of the word. Some things work, some don’t, but the “big swing” deserves all the respect in the world, and if this is an indicator of the ambitiously-authored cinema yet to come from this community, we are all on our way to something truly special.
Ethan J. Connor, Dispatches From The Cinema
Lost Cause is an audacious film... interesting, sharp and novel.
Aaron Guttenplan, Moviejawn
Lost Cause is a totally singular work, a meta-textually thorny but formally and aesthetically invigorating concept musical that unabashedly explores and refracts all of the deep polarization present in our country in a way that has its finger so deeply on the pulse that it is almost inextricable from it. It asks us how we can engage with people who think and act differently than us, if at all, and what we are left to do when it doesn't work... It asks a lot of questions and really forces the audience to find their own answers to them, all while wrestling with a deeply Brechtian story-within-a-story framework, Mamet-esque dialogue that hits hard, and songs that sonically capture the dread of modern discourse packaged in infectious arrangements and lyrics... The star of the film is the inability to communicate. The lack of goodwill between individuals that is present everywhere around us. The erosion of our relationships based on political assumptions that may or may not even be true. The closest thing to a human star the film has is Kritzer, who has so deeply (and intentionally) obfuscated himself in the work by portraying several different named and unnamed characters, including his own proxy version of himself, in an attempt to remove his views from the piece and simply reflect the views of the world... For those who are looking for life reflected in art reflected in life, not to mention some new bangers, Lost Cause is a movie you should see without hesitation. Give it a chance, as you should with any cinema that is willing to help us better understand the world in ways that feels new.
Larry Fried
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