The Public (Emilio Estevez, 2018): USA

Reviewed by Markus Rusti. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival 2018.

The Public is Emilio Estevez’ feature about the homeless population of Cincinnati using the public library as a homeless shelter during a cold break in modern time. When the night gets so cold that people start dying from exposure, conflict arises. On a normal day when the library is about to close. a group of homeless men decides to occupy the library for the night in order to stay warm. The story escalates from here.

Emilio Estevez fills the cast with several talents we know. Christian Slater plays Josh Davis, an arrogant prosecutor running for mayor, Alec Baldwin is Detective Bill Ramstead, a crisis negotiator whose son happens to be a drug addict and also an asshole, Michael Kenneth Williams as Jackson, a homeless veteran, and Taylor Schilling as Angela, Stuart’s neighbour who is a recovering alcoholic. Jacob Vargas plays Ernesto, Stuarts best friend and security guard at the public. Jeffrey Wright is Anderson, Stuart Goodson’s boss. Emilio Estevez plays Stuart Goodson, a Librarian with a secret background. Stuart has been working for the local library of Cincinnati for several years. he knows the status quo and has befriended the homeless population that comes in to clean themselves and stays warm during the day.

The movie starts off by introducing our characters and filling us in on the status quo of the public library where we will be spending most of our time. There is a certain rhythm to the dialogue, you can tell that it is written exceedingly well. You start to feel the rhythm, and whenever it feels like it was losing the audience it hits you with another callback to a joke. The music produced by Tyler Bates is a low key hard-hitting hip-hop song that fittingly starts off telling us to burn the books. In naming the film “The Public” Emilio presents a double meaning. It’s not just about the public library, but also the local population of Cincinnati who happens to have a lot of homelessness.