FIRST CHAIR | Omeleto Drama

A clarinet player tries to hold 'first chair'.
FIRST CHAIR is used with permission from Montgomery Brothers. Learn more at / montgomery_brothers .
Jin is a clarinet player who holds first chair in her college band. During the week of chair assessments, she meets a new student and clarinet player, Nathan. Nathan is prodigiously talented, with a naturally keen ear. But Jin is determined to hold onto her first chair position.
She pushes herself to practice more, spending hours alone. But Jin is unconfident and feels down, deriving little joy in the process of playing the clarinet. But as she feels the press of rivalry and competition and develops a tentative friendship with Nathan, she also reveals the authentic voice within herself.
Directed and written by Montgomery Brothers -- twins Luke and Ethan Montgomery, who also plays the role of Nathan -- this sensitive, perceptive short drama is about music and musicians, immersed in the nitty-gritty of learning, playing, practicing and performing. But it's also about the act of listening and hearing, both to others and to one's self, and how it can reveal and change our inner voices.
The film begins with a sequence of Jin in a practice room playing a self-composed song on piano before dutifully picking up the clarinet, shot from outside the room, almost in a furtive, secretive way. In many ways, the storytelling that follows is equally pared-down and poetic: the writing offers little background information and the dialogue throughout is sparse, more concerned with concrete details instead of introspective feeling. But with its moodier, almost somber cinematography and perceptive camera, the film deftly captures the undertow of emotion underlying Jin's action. It's a river of feeling she only gives voice to in her own music. But in her surface life, she goes through the motions of achievement and success.
That arc towards achievement is threatened when Nathan enters the picture. He has a keen, precise ear, able to pick out fleeting wrong notes in a flurry of melody. More importantly, he seems to simply enjoy playing the clarinet more, moving with the rhythm. None of this is lost on Jin, who begins to ramp up her practice out of a growing, gnawing sense of insecurity. Actor Jin Kim deftly captures the flickers of conflicted emotions within her character, especially the tug between an inner private yearning towards her own music and the dutiful demands for excellence in her public performance. Jin keeps these two sides of her music-making in separate compartments, but the borders between them dissolve when she finds a fragile bond with Nathan -- and she brings her inner voice out into the open.
In a more predictable film, FIRST CHAIR would parlay the film's most heartfelt moment into one that transforms Jin and Nathan, opening them up to a blossoming friendship and self-actualization. But the storytelling is too restrained and emotionally intelligent for that. Instead, the film gently veers onto a different, perhaps more realistic path, one that asks questions about the tension between inner direction and outer reinforcement -- and what it may take to break that tension and fly free to where we truly want to go.

[@KW-kr9gh]

I really enjoyed this short film. Would like to see more as in a full-length feature film.

[@cineshri12]

Superb writing and performances. Technically top notch too..❤

[@doganozkan2231]

Thank you so much