When we spoke to Nathan Silver in December, he made no illusions about having his follow-up to Between the Temples—one of 2024’s best—set. It was around this time that we’d heard much (and given much praise to) Simón Mesa Soto’s Un Certain Regard winner A Poet, which recently landed in U.S. theaters via 1-2 Special. Thus I suppose it was under our noses the whole time: Deadline reports that Silver’s next feature will be an English-language, upstate New York-set remake co-written with regular collaborator Chris “C. Mason” Wells and produced by Saïd Ben Saïd. Shooting is expected to commence this fall.
A Poet‘s own narrative certainly bears overlap with Silver and Wells’ last project, focusing as it does on a depressive middle-aged man who finds solace in mentoring a female student—albeit one much younger, contra Temples‘ Carol Kane-Jason Schwartzman dynamic. (The latter would probably make a perfect fit for this new project’s lead, not least for having the face of a man named Oscar.) Silver has talked openly about his own mother’s experience inspiring Temples; continuing the strain of writing what one knows, the director noted to Deadline that he “can relate all too well to a story of struggling to achieve artistic recognition, financial stability, and finding poetry in everyday life.” Meanwhile, Wells says their Poet will offer an “American cover version — in a new language and sound but with the same infectious melody.”
Were both projects completely impersonal and entirely dissimilar for narrative focus, one could still imagine their creative sensibilities matching Soto’s. As we said in our review last year, A Poet is the “kind of unscrupulous character study [that] may test the patience of anyone wondering the point of watching this sad sack fall deeper into his self-made hole, and certain stretches suggest slightly extended repetitions of what came before. Yet as the Coens put Larry Gopnik through the wringer nearly a decade and a half ago, here’s another updated telling of the Book of Job that finds an absurdly comic side to such afflictions.”