What is Wednesday about? Is it about love? Is it about redemption? Is it, in fact, an exercise in narcissism? To all three I would say yes, but Wednesday, a unique and experimental film, is above all things a work that struggles with its own ambitions. For most films that would be a criticism. For Justin D. Hilliard’s feature debut, however, it is anything but.

With those ambitions intact, the film becomes a harrowing journey through four stories. One is about a young man dealing with his family and his past in relation to his current lover. One is about an old man trying to find his way back to a love that he had lost so long ago. One is about a mother whose dedication to the right things may have not have served its purpose. The third story disintegrates into a final narrative about an artist whose film begins to take on a shape that he could never have anticipated.

It’s that fourth one that matters most. It’s that fourth one that takes me from comparing this film to say 21 Grams to realizing there are few films that can be honestly put next to Wednesday. While I’m inclined to use Almodovar’s Bad Education as a ruler for success, that too, with its own film-within-a-film story, doesn’t sit just right. Wednesday strikes me as a film with many potential comparisons, none of which seem to be totally viable.

The uniqueness may be why, in spite of so many things that I could have disliked, I didn’t find myself able to turn away from the film. I was intrigued and interested in the stories that initiate an existential discussion of human loss and redemption and floored by a sudden and jarring turn toward the intelligent introspection of an artist with something so bold and so beautiful waiting to escape that it may actually destroy his creation.

The film as we know it is eventually destroyed and from rising from the ashes is a miraculous creature. The original creation, an affecting but at times melodramatic work, could have lead to attacks on the film. What Wednesday does successfully is it addresses the criticism that would have come in words like “pretentious” or “overwrought,” forcing the viewer to engage the film in a different way than they would have otherwise. Most people don’t go into a film with a back-up plan on how to view it, and with that in mind, Wednesday succeeds.

Had the film progressed as three simple narratives, I would have commented on Ryan Hurst, who plays the young man in the first story I reference above, and his convincing and affecting performance. I would have complimented the editing, which keeps the three narratives appropriately constructed as three interrelating tales. I would have also noted Ryan Hartsell’s subtle, but distinct photographic style.

If Wednesday has a fault it’s that I’m not left remembering those things alone, things that should have made me love the film (specifically Hurst’s performance). Instead, I’m left to focus primarily on something that is so successful that, while it may intensify the love I would have felt for one of the earlier stories, it doesn’t let me respect them singularly.

I did want to feel for those earlier characters without anything else, but the fourth narrative, this seemingly autobiographical storyline, makes me understand those vignettes as a part of something greater. I’m still affected by those earlier stories, but on the whole, Wednesday demands at least a second viewing to fully appreciate what Hilliard has done. With a film like Wednesday, a film that stayed with me for days after first seeing it, there will be no complaints on having to see it again.