For Cal and his circle, they barely conduct a single conversation that doesn’t revolve around architecture, literature, theology, history. There are always more footnotes, theoretical perspectives, cantos, translations to cite, so many ways of keeping everyday life at bay. When the friends exchange all this absurdly specific knowledge, they do so with such earnest relentlessness that it’s hard to suppress a smile, although melancholy is never far away. Even when the group gets together, they often remain apart in the frame with no wider shot to connect them, one face holds forth, another stays silent, are they even in the same place at all?