‘Darkest Miriam’ movie review: a beautifully made character study

Filmmaker Naomi Jaye’s second feature is a beautifully made character study, a comedy/drama with elements of a romance, mystery, ghost story, and psychological adventure, most of it taking place in the modest setting of an inner-city public library. The deceptively simple plot is engrossing on its own but is also a hiding place for intriguing questions and observations, and the library and its patrons are used as a running commentary on humanity, all from the thoughtful perspective of the central character, librarian Miriam Gordon (Britt Lower).

The film is an adaptation of Martha Baillie’s experimental novel The Incident Report—a difficult adaptation that has been 14 years in the making. When director Jaye first read the novel, she immediately began making plans to adapt it into a movie. With minimal financial support, she first turned the novel into a unique, nine-screen multi-media display before moving on to a feature film.

The novel uses a peculiar format, consisting of reports filled out by Miriam with minimal data, allowing the reader to fill in the blanks and understand the bigger story behind these documents. Jaye’s screenplay expands on the idea, including some of the often amusing incident reports, but also making the characters and events visible, bringing Miriam into the open and making her a full and enjoyable character.

Miriam is a librarian who loves her work and the people she encounters, but she is also, as the film begins, intensely grieving for her recently deceased father, a grief that has caused her to withdraw and become isolated. In the first act, Miriam spends her time and affection on the library patrons, showing equal warmth to book lovers and to the various poor or indigent people who visit the library for information, help, or simply shelter from the weather.

Much of this chapter is spent on asides in which library incident reports are read to the camera or acted out, describing funny or inexplicable events and odd requests by library visitors. Britt Lower is excellent in the role, bringing across both Miriam’s sadness and her naturally lively personality in a nicely understated way.

Determined to escape her lonely and prolonged mourning, Miriam starts a relationship with a cab driver and artist, Janko (Tom Mercier), portrayed as a quirky but warm alliance that begins to break Miriam out of her shell. It is Janko who gives her the insightful, half-joking nickname of Darkest Miriam. At the same time, a mystery develops, and odd, sinister messages begin to be left for Miriam in the library, messages that seem to relate to her late father.

There is poignancy in the references to Miriam’s life with her father, in particular to the music they enjoyed together, but there are also dark notes that hint at something wrong or harmful in their relationship. The final act provides some resolution, but the mysterious aspects of the story remain enigmatic, allowing the viewer to come to his own conclusions.

The characters in Darkest Miriam are presented in loving detail; Jaye takes pains to focus on the faces of the library patrons and to give even their most foolish or irrational remarks full attention and the central focus of a camera shot, letting the camera take on Miriam’s benevolent perspective. But the director goes beyond that, giving even select locations and inanimate objects beauty and significance beyond their lowly status.

Jaye takes care to represent the public library itself as Miriam sees it: a remarkable bubble of civility within an often cold and inhospitable city that provides information, help, support, guidance, and shelter to anyone who enters. Jaye did much of her scriptwriting inside a public library, allowing it to inspire her, as she saw the library as the inspiration behind the original novel. At key moments, the camera leaves the library to scan the indoor garden nearby, letting the close-up contemplation of flowering plants mark and celebrate small events in the life of the library and its neighbourhood, as when it represents Miriam’s beginning to emerge from her mourning period.

A cryptic and unconventional story is effectively adapted to film through the vision and creativity of an impressive new filmmaking talent.

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