"After all, the world is full of fascinating characters and events, and not all of them have to end with a call to action; some just help us see the world through someone else's eyes.
The comparison is especially apt with 45365. In making their love letter to the town they grew up in, the Ross brothers opted not to follow any individual story arc, instead floating from scene to scene in an underrated slice-of-life collage. They give equal attention to small town politics, teen drama, local talk radio, county fairs, cops and criminals and kids. They spend sad, lonely moments with strange old men and listen in on the off-color chatter of funny old women. The result is a sort of tone poem that resembles This American Life’s honest look at the everyday without either endorsing or condescending to its subjects.
What 45365 does better than anything is create a sense of place — and what it feels like to be in that place — and in that regard its willfully obscure title makes sense. The zip code of Sidney, Ohio is an extremely specific designation for the small town they’ve captured so well. But at the same time, this anonymous-seeming five digit code could correspond to any rural county, and the people whose lives we visit could as easily be in Idaho or Iowa or Alabama. 45365 isn’t the story of Sidney, but an encapsulation of the sweet, funny, peculiar and profound moments of small town life. For all of us who’ve grown up and moved on to the big city to find ourselves, it’s a warm feeling to return for these 90 minutes and remember fondly where we came from."
From: Documentaries Aren't Always for Activists: A Trip to 45365
Under Culture
