''A Bread Factory'' is a 2018 American two-part indie

comedy Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term ori ...

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super ...

written and directed by Patrick Wang. It features an

ensemble cast In a dramatic production, an ensemble cast is one that is composed of multiple principal actors and performers who are typically assigned roughly equal amounts of screen time.Random House: ensemble acting Linked 2013-07-17 Structure In contrast t ...

and depicts a fictional community

arts center An art centre or arts center is distinct from an art gallery or art museum. An arts centre is a functional community centre with a specific remit to encourage arts practice and to provide facilities such as theatre space, gallery space, venues for ...

in a small

upstate New York Upstate New York is a geographic region consisting of the area of New York State that lies north and northwest of the New York City metropolitan area. Although the precise boundary is debated, Upstate New York excludes New York City and Long ...

town that struggles under economic and social pressures. It received critical acclaim. The second part was Brian Murray‘s final role prior to his death.

Plot

The film takes place in the fictional

town of Checkford. It centers on The Bread Factory, a community

run by a married couple, Dorothea and Greta, as well as daily life in the surrounding town. In the first part, a

conceptual art Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called inst ...

duo, May Ray, arrive in town and begin staging flashy, highly produced but utterly vapid performances. They threaten to siphon away an arts grant on which The Bread Factory depends. Dorothea and Greta work to convince the town council not to reassign the funds. The second part centers around a performance of

Euripides Euripides (; grc, Εὐριπίδης, Eurīpídēs, ; ) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars ...

' tragedy ''

Hecuba Hecuba (; also Hecabe; grc, Ἑκάβη, Hekábē, ) was a queen in Greek mythology, the wife of King Priam of Troy during the Trojan War. Description Hecuba was described by the chronicler Malalas in his account of the ''Chronography'' as "da ...

'' at The Bread Factory.

Cast

Tyne Daly Ellen Tyne Daly (; born February 21, 1946) is an American actress. She has won six Emmy Awards for her television work, a Tony Award and is a 2011 American Theatre Hall of Fame inductee. Daly began her career on stage in summer stock in New York ...

as Dorothea *Elisabeth Henry as Greta *

James Marsters James Wesley Marsters (born August 20, 1962) is an American actor, musician, singer, comic book writer, and audiobook narrator. He is sometimes credited in various anime series and video games as David Gray and Sam Majesters in the series ''Dr ...

as Jason *

Nana Visitor Nana Tucker ( ; born July 26, 1957), known professionally as Nana Visitor, is an American actress, best known for playing Kira Nerys in the television series '' Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'' and Jean Ritter in the television series ''Wildfire''. ...

as Elsa *

Keaton Nigel Cooke Keaton Nigel Cooke is an American film actor, television actor, and singer. He made his television debut in '' Difficult People'' (2015) and his film debut in '' Wiener-Dog'' (2016). Career Keaton Nigel Cooke is an American film actor, televisi ...

as Simon * Glynnis O'Connor as Jan *Zachary Sayle as Max *

Janet Hsieh Janet Hsieh (; born January 20, 1980) is a Taiwanese-American television personality, violinist, author, and model based in Taipei, Taiwan. She is the host of the Discovery Travel and Living Channel's long-running series '' Fun Taiwan''.Taiwa ...

as May *

George Young George Young may refer to: Arts and entertainment * George Young (filmmaker), Australian stage manager and film director in the silent era * George Young (rock musician) (1946–2017), Australian musician, songwriter, and record producer * Geor ...

as Ray * Brian Murray as Sir Walter *Nan-Lyn Nelson as Mavis *

Janeane Garofalo Janeane Marie Garofalo ( ; born September 28, 1964) is an American comedian, actress, and former co-host on the now-defunct Air America Radio's ''The Majority Report''. Garofalo began her career as a stand-up comedian and became a cast member on ...

as Jordan * Jessica Pimentel as Teresa

Production

The film was inspired by

Time & Space Limited Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to co ...

, a local arts center in

Hudson, New York Hudson is a city and the county seat of Columbia County, New York, United States. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 5,894. Located on the east side of the Hudson River and 120 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, it was named for the river ...

. It was filmed in Hudson over 24 days, following 10 days of rehearsals.

Themes and interpretations

Critics identified the central themes of the film as the value and impact of

the arts The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both h ...

, and the difficulty of producing and promoting meaningful artistic work in a

market economy A market economy is an economic system in which the decisions regarding investment, production and distribution to the consumers are guided by the price signals created by the forces of supply and demand, where all suppliers and consumers ar ...

Release

The film was released in the United States on October 26, 2018.

Reception

The film received universal critical acclaim. On

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

, both parts have an approval rating of 100%, based on 30 and 22 reviews respectively. The critic consensus for the first part states "Epic yet intimate, ''A Bread Factory, Part One: For the Sake of Gold'' delivers the sprawling storytelling and nourishing drama audiences might expect from its imposing title." On review aggregator

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, the film has a weighted average score of 91 based on 9 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Justin Chang, writing for the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...

'', called the film a "warm and prickly humanist triumph" that "feels meticulously handcrafted in every respect". Bilge Ebiri, writing for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', designated the film a critic pick, noting that it has "a deliberate pace and thematic ambition to spare — but it also has a ground-level, plain-spoken modesty that renders it hypnotic."

Matt Zoller Seitz Matt Zoller Seitz (born December 26, 1968) is an American film and television critic, author and film-maker. Career Matt Zoller Seitz is editor-at-large at RogerEbert.com, and the television critic for '' New York'' magazine and Vulture.com, as ...

RogerEbert.com ''RogerEbert.com'' is an American film review website that archives reviews written by film critic Roger Ebert for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' and also shares other critics' reviews and essays. The website, underwritten by the ''Chicago Sun-Times' ...

gave the film four out of four stars, calling it "a wildly ambitious yet self-effacing epic about a place and its people". Richard Brody, writing for ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issue ...

'', described the film as a "comprehensive vision" drawn from Wang's "ferociously dedicated, deeply empathetic, finely conceived sense of purpose", offering "a detailed, expansive view of local politics and, for that matter, of the nature of community".

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Bread Factory 2018 films 2018 comedy films 2018 drama films 2018 independent films American comedy films American drama films American independent films Films about the arts Films about theatre Films directed by Patrick Wang Films set in New York (state) Films set in the 2010s Films shot in New York (state) 2010s English-language films 2010s American films