A Void: There is a Hole in the Ground

(2022)

Catherine Weidner in There is a Hole

In There is a Hole in the Ground, Aidan Cronin’s haunting 12 minute short, an older woman (Catherine Weidner), who lives alone in a modest, rural house, discovers a mysterious hole in her yard. As the film continues, it becomes clear that the hole is a poetic metaphor, which could be read as our human awareness of our own mortality, our contemplation of non-being, or equally as the emptiness of chronic depression, since the woman is burdened by a deep sadness, and always seems on the verge of tears. Quite often, this kind of symbolism in film can feel contrived, heavy-handed, or trite, but Cronin adopts a strategy of telling his story of existential despair through extremely simple, direct physical actions, and the effect is that the images in the film are elevated to fabulous elements in a tale of magic realism and they crackle with poetic resonances. The woman’s direct physical reaction to the strangeness of the hole in her yard seems to embody her dismay at confronting the void, in a way that, because of the simplicity and directness of its expression, feels authentic and easy to identify with. We’re all mortal, we’ve all experienced grief, and we all have been where she is.

The opening shot, and quite a few shots in the film, are taken from the point of view of the hole itself, looking up at her bewildered face. This places the viewer in the interesting position of looking into her life, but seemingly from outside of her universe, which in a sense is what the experience of watching a film is always like.

At times, the hole emits strange, disturbing sounds, incoherent voices mixed with white noise, and she tries to find ways to block out the sound. She tries to evade thinking about the hole, but everything in her house reminds her of its existence: the drain in her sink, the toilet. The hole is impossible to suppress.

Having a panic attack, she calls a friend to tell him about the hole. He’s immediately sympathetic, and simply states that the hole is a part of the experience of being human. This acknowledgement that her suffering is not unique and is, in fact, universal, has a considerable calming effect on her (for a while).

She tries to calm herself down by playing a soothing tune on a harmonium. Later, her music also becomes an outlet for her anxiety and frustration, which she expresses by playing violent, discordant music.

She also tries to distract herself by plunging vigorously into housework. Housework is one of the daily human activities which is almost always absent from movies, and I appreciated Cronin’s expressive inclusion of it. As we scrub and polish our homes, aren’t we trying to banish death and decay? Doesn’t the very busyness of relentless housework serve to distract us from falling into dark moods? But to no avail: even her vacuum cleaner, inevitably, brings her back to the inescapable chilling thought of the hole.

In the end, she comes to grimly accept the hole as a permanent presence in her life. She still seems overwhelmingly sad, but there is a certain peace in knowing that she can stop fighting against reality. Just as she finds a certain comfort in sharing her despair with her friend on the phone, we find comfort in Cronin’s poetic depiction of a universal human condition. Using an unadorned, plain style of storytelling, he depicts a dilemma that has no simple answers. The result is poetic visual storytelling of considerable elegance and emotional power.

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