the artist talking only to himself — "Joelle thought them more like a…"

Joelle's verdict on the father's films is a verdict on the father: technically flawless and emotionally sealed, the craft of a man who can build any image but cannot reach an audience, the way you'd talk to a prisoner through the glass with the phones. The moniker gives it away — the Work is titled at "Himself," a smart man in a room conversing with himself, which is exactly the thing his sons keep bruising themselves against, and exactly what the last, lethal film will finally try to break out of. [sweep · shared-ground film-optics]