You Know Mr Gorbachev, The Guy That Ran Russia For So Long?

I can never really work out whether I think To Die For is overrated or underrated. I quite enjoy it, but is it actually good? All of the camp theatrics of the film - are they deliberate overplays designed almost to function in a Brechtian way, to stop you really relating to the characters and instead forcing you to analyse them critically? Or are they kind of just overplays. I'm tending to go with the former. I'm thinking I like the film.

Nicole Kidman plays Suzanne, a beautiful girl with no real talents but a true desire to succeed. She badgers her way on screen as a weather reporter for a local news station, and is constantly winning over her husband Larry (Matt Dillon) to get her way - manipulating him into submission is probably a more accurate way to describe her actions. Larry wants Suzanne to take time off her climbing of the corporate ladder in order to start a family, something Suzanne is not keen on. To this end, she begins a project with schoolkids and lures three of the dumbest and most hick into her trap. 


Jimmy (Joaquin Phoenix) is the ringleader, probably the dumbest, and Suzanne seduces him one night at her house. Russel (Casey Affleck) seems to be a bit smarter but still follows Jimmy around as his foil, while Lydia (Alison Folland) idolises Suzanne and seems to have no one else to hang around with than the two brutes - I believe after rewatching To Die For that Lydia is in fact a lesbian, in love with Suzanne, unsure of how to deal with her teenage feelings in a small American town. Suzanne ends up bribing and cajoling the kids to off Larry, which they do, before Suzanne turns her backs on them and pretends to know nothing about it - she is let off from her charges due to entrapment technicalities employed by the police in gathering evidence against her. She thinks she has won, but in the end she does not, something shown with a great little cameo from David Cronenberg.


Kidman won her first Golden Globe for her terrific performance, combining devious planning with ditzy actions and making herself endlessly creepy yet undeniably watchable. Dillon played the shallow role of the husband well also - it wasn't much of a stretch in terms of complexity of character, and the camped nature of his performance suited his strengths. Affleck was strong in a small role, and Folland did decent work with her confused character (she is probably my weakest link in the cast, however), while Phoenix did terrific things with his down and dirty portrayal of someone who may in fact be on the verge of a medical diagnosis of mild retardation. His character allowed for the deepest character representation in a real sense on screen, and he grabbed hold of it and made it work for him. No wonder he went on to become the great performer he has since been recognised as.


The script from Buck Henry (based on the book by Joyce Maynard) was very clever, and the dialogue and narration from Suzanne was written perfectly. Director Gus Van Sant let the film take itself along, giving it a quirk but leaving it decidedly more accessible to the mainstream than his earlier works. He seems to dip in and out of mainstream in phases - following To Die For he ran around and made such films as Finding Forrester and Good Will Hunting, before dropping out again for the Death Trilogy (here and here), and now seems to be in and out much faster - Milk was serious yet commercial but upcoming Restless looks like it may play more akin to Paranoid Park.


Anyway, I've distracted myself. I like it. I do. 4 stars.

I'm Not Going To Be Okay, Bud.

In the midst of Gus Van Sant's Death trilogy (here and here) Vincent Gallo made a film that was, by many, derided as the worst film to ever play in competition at Cannes. Granted, the version of Gallo's The Brown Bunny that premiered at Cannes was almost 30% longer than the final theatrical release, but I don't know what all the fuss is about. Sure, it's not a terrific film, but I've seen worse from the Cannes competition - much worse. And there were many similarities to Van Sant's death trilogy (hence the opening): moody following shots; silence; long stretches of apparent nothingness speaking much more than the lack of words would attest. My main curiosity is how the hell this film cost US$10mil to make (quoting the estimate on imdb.com here...)

Gallo (writer, director, lead actor, cinematographer... anything else? Oh yes, camera operator, producer, editor, art director, production designer, makeup, blah blah you get the point) is Bud, a motorcycle racer who has just finished up a race in New Hampshire and is apparently heading over the California for the next one. He stops at a gas station and hits on the young female attendant, Violet (Anna Vareschi), somehow convincing her to come with him. He drops her at her house, she goes in to pack, she comes back out, he is gone.


His next stop is at Daisy's parents' house, a girl we do not know. He says he lived next door when he was growing up and chats to the parents about Daisy, about how the parents visited Bud and Daisy when they lived in California together (they don't remember), and about her pet bunny rabbit, sitting there in the same room, according to the parents the same rabbit she had when Bud was growing up next door. He stops at a pet store after he leaves and is told that rabbits don't live longer than five or six years - his repeated request for confirmation makes you assume that Daisy's rabbit must be somewhat older than that, or that the memory of her parents is somewhat... lacking. He continues to a highway rest shelter where he sees a woman (Cheryl Tiegs) sitting on her own, sipping a cup of coffee. He walks over to her and they begin to kiss, passionately, before he leaves again. Barely a word is spoken between them.


Stopping to get his bike checked on the way, he arrives in California and returns to the house he shared with Daisy, leaving her a note letting her know where he is staying. Daisy (Chloë Sevigny) turns up and the two talk about old times, argue, and then the infamous unsimulated fellatio scene appears. But does it?


Like I said, it's not terrible. It's a rambling melancholic memory-trip, bringing up emotions in Bud and with a great kick at the end that does probably save the film from being below-average. Gallo was pretty poor in his lead role, not really lending anything to the film that many other actors could have, and have in similar films in the past. Stumbling through without allowing any real glimpses into what is behind those eyes of his, he is saved by the naivety of Violet, the strength of despair in the woman at the rest stop, and the power of Sevigny's Daisy. Sevigny really is the saving grace of the film - she's a terrific actress, and brings to Daisy a sorrow and pain that manages to show you as much about Bud as it does about herself.


It's a 3 star film. Middling, really. Not terrible, not great. Just... there.

Some Heavy Shit's Going Down.

I brought up Gus Van Sant's 'Death' trilogy when I wrote about Gerry, and after watching it I couldn't get Elephant out of my head, so I rewatched it. (Actually, in the last week and with another coming up, I've done a bit of rewatching recently. I think it's all these 'Best of the 00s' lists coming in thick and strong at the moment - reminding me of what I've loved over the last decade and getting me craving to check them out again. Hold tight, as I'll more than likely rewatch Requiem For A Dream, Mulholland Drive and Dancer In The Dark shortly. They're all top ten of the noughties for me, I reckon.)

Anyway, Elephant would be right up as one of my favs from the last ten years. I didn't know a great deal about it coming into my first viewing back at the beginning of 2004 when it released in Australia, other than that it had won the Palme d'Or that year. And I was suitably gobsmacked by it. It was, and remains, such an amazingly powerful film, so relevant (and it's sad that it is still relevant today, showing a true ongoing tragedy both in youth, schooling and gun control), so beautiful (something its unofficial and much lesser 'remake' of sorts 2:37 tried to match but just couldn't) and so singularly striking in composition, tone and subject.


Elephant centers around a high school, just your average, run-of-the-mill American high school on an average day with nothing special going on, when suddenly 'some heavy shit' does, in fact, go on. John (John Robinson) is taken to his school late by his drunk father, and gets in trouble with the principal. Eli has been off taking photographs, and goes into the lab to develop them. Michelle has just been blasted by her gym teacher for wearing pants in gym instead of shorts like the rest of them. Nathan and Carrie are checking themselves out of school to, presumably, go for a bit of rumpy-pumpy. Jordan, Nicole and Brittany are stuffing themselves on lettuce before they decide they're too full to continue, and must purge. Eric and Alex and walking up to the school with camo uniforms on and bags full of guns. Just a normal day at school.


The film takes places with tremendously long tracking shots following each character or character set individually, watching as they cross over and move into their days. Harris Savides controls the light perfectly, rendering stunning images as the camera moves from inside to outside, room to room, character to character, slo-mo to real-mo. It's truly astonishing work that I can't begin to describe adequately so I'm going to leave it there. the performances from the primarily amateur cast are astonishing, creating characters that you know and understand (because they do entirely work off stereotypes, something entirely necessary when you're dealing with such tragedy and so many people in such a short space of time) in a very short space of time.


Despite the short space of time, Van Sant manages to explore many themes about and directed at youth, many elements troubling them. Michelle is clearly plagued with body image issues. Ditto Jordan, Nicole and Brittany. John is struggling with personal family problems that he doesn't really seem to be able to talk about. And then Eric and Alex - well, none of what you might think apply. Alex plays classical piano. They read. They joke around. Yes, they watch a documentary on Goebbels and the propaganda movement in Nazi Germany, but they also make out in the shower on the day of the shooting. There are no judgement calls here - nothing they do (short of ordering guns online - how is it that they're able to do that? And how can a delivery man just ask a kid to sign for something obviously not ordered by him? - and then shooting them) is really different to what so many kids their age would be doing in their spare time. Van Sant answers no questions - he just shows it how it is.


I think the most moving part of the story for me is the truncated episode starring Benny. He only appears right at the very end as the massacre is under way. We follow him curiously wandering the halls, apparently ignoring the fleeing students around him. He helps a girl out of a window and then keeps exploring, not a word spoken, before he is finally shot. It simply reinforces the horrific randomness of incidents like this. We hadn't seen him before, and he's shot suddenly and without thought. It is true tragedy.


5 stars all round for this film. It's one of those perfect moments of cinema where everything falls into place to create something to effective, which remains effective time after time and years later. Hats off to Van Sant.

Try Being Born A Male Russian Countess Into A White, Middle Class Baptist Family.

Following on from my second Swedish film a couple of posts back, we now have my third Gus Van Sant film! Even Cowgirls Get The Blues is, what, his fourth feature, after Mala Noche, Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho, directly before he went all mainstream with To Die For, Good Will Hunting and the like.

Cowgirls (title is toooo long to type out) has a pretty bad rep. It's IMDb.com rating is sitting not-so-pretty at 3.9/10, which is pretty bad. I didn't think it was his best work (in fact, I'd say that out of all of his work that I've seen, and that's everything but Mala Noche and Finding Forrester - I think I've actually seen the last but I have no recollection - it is his worst), but I'd put it better than that.


Sissy (Uma Thurman) is a girl born to hitchhike - that is, she is born with two enormously oversized thumbs, which also seem to possess powers such that she is always able to get a ride. She doesn't have any one home, instead hitching back and forth across the country, going wherever her ride takes her, sleeping where she can. The Countess (John Hurt) knows her from her time as a successful model, and soon asks her to come to his ranch, which is really a beauty spa for wealthy women, to shoot an advertisement for beauty products with the Whooping Cranes that migrate through his property.


The ranch, however, has been taken over by a team of marauding lesbian cowgirls, led by Bonanza Jellybean (Rain Phoenix), who quickly develops deep feelings for our dear Sissy. As they keep a hold of the cranes, much to the dismay of the nation, law enforcement is called in to try and release them, resulting in tragedy.


Nothing about this film is truly tragic, however. It's myriad movements and plot vignettes hark it back to more drug-addled film days - my first thought for comparison is 1970s Performance, though I haven't seen it in years and years, so I don't know how accurate that comparison actually is. What I'm getting at is that there are numerous little diversions and shifts in where the story are going that stop it from really and truly being a straight through traditional narrative, but not enough to make it a mind-fuck along the lines of what our Central and South American directors have been doing over the last decade or so. So, to some, it might well look like sloppy filmmaking and storytelling, whereas I took it more as controlled stream of consciousness. The comedy in the film is fairly apparent, and the more dramatic moments are always coloured by it, and don't really take themselves seriously. Phoenix isn't particularly strong, but somehow Thurman helps her to pull it off through her over-the-top conviction.


A bunch of bit parts and cameos keep you interested - Roseanne Barr (credited, of course, as Roseanne Arnold), Keanu Reeves, Crispin Glover, Angie Dickinson, Heather Graham, Udo Kier, William S Burroughs, River Phoenix (to whom the movie is dedicated) and Pat Morita are all around - how strange does that read as a cast list?


Anyway, it's ok. Not good, not bad, just average. 2.5 stars.

Make Me A Dirt-Mattress.

Gus Van Sant's Death Trilogy is, with von Trier's Golden Heart Trilogy, probably my favourite film trilogy ever. Probably. I think it helps that neither of these are trilogies in the sense that they are a single story told in three parts, instead being a thematic trilogy exploring aspects of humanity and life. Until now, however, I'd never seen the first installment in Van Sant's trilogy, Gerry. Someone, a long time ago, told me it was a pile of crap, not worth looking at. Oh how wrong I have found them to be.

Two best friends, both named Gerry (played by Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, so from hereon in, if I refer to a Gerry I will in fact be referring to them by actor name - Damon or Affleck. Please try and remember that this is Casey, not Ben, though. As no one really wants to think of Ben unless they absolutely have to) decide to go for a walk. They are in a huge wilderness reserve, and very quickly get lost whilst on their way to the 'thing', the big thing, whatever it is, that makes going to this park worthwhile. They in fact decide this thing is not even worth seeing, but by then they are hopelessly, hopelessly lost. The sleep a few nights rough, they climb hills and mountains to try and find some semblance of civilisation, they trek in search of water (they have none, and find none) and food (they have none, and find none.) They do this across desert dunes, salt flats, dry rolling hills, shale deposits - every barren and hostile environment you can imagine. And do they find anything to aid them? No. They do not. They walk and they walk, for the most part silently, and they never find anything.

I must say, this sounds on the surface like one of the most unequivocally boring films ever in the history of the world. Two grown men go into the desert, get lost, and walk around for a bunch of days without really saying or doing a great deal. Woohoo! Quick, get me two tickets to every remaining session! I must carve the title into my forearm to declare my anticipation to the world!

The film is far, far more than that. It is an incredible and moving insight into the minds of these two men, the depths of their friendship. This is something that is very rarely seen on film. The two Gerrys have obviously known each other for a long, long time. They almost have their own language - it's discernable for us, but primarily in context. If you said 'dirt-mattress' to me out of the blue, I would have no idea what you were talking about. Ditto 'rock-marooned', or 'shirt basket.' Damon and Affleck have been through much together, and they have created their own way of understanding each other.

Their ability to be silent together, but to still let you know how they are feeling, is another astonishing aspect of the depth of their friendship - because not once during the film do you get the feeling that they are playing for the camera, but simply that they are playing for each other. Their silences speak so much. Some of the shots of them just walking, slow tracking shots through nothingness, are so powerful. So much is spoken between them, you can feel them emanating emotion at each other. It's astonishing.

And, like I said, this kind of male-friendship film is very rarely seen. It is entirely non-sexual, it is not a buddy road movie, it is just a couple of really good friends, going for a walk, and having to deal with the unexpected serious consequences. It is a true insight into the minds of men, without any bells and whistles. When the shit hit the fan, they just went about getting stuff done, and put to one side any real feelings of animosity or blame, because that's what friends like this do, right? When you're stuck in the desert with no food or water and no way out, who cares whether it was Gerry's fault? You just care about getting the hell out.

Harris Savides lensed Gerry (as he did Elephant and Last Days, the other two parts of the trilogy, as well as Milk), and he did a stunning job, languidly following the two guys as they... walked. He never hurried them, he never changed them, he let them lead the way, and then did beautiful things with the frames they fell within. In a diverse desert there are of course plenty of opportunities to create some stunning images, and Savides doesn't disappoint. It is an incredible looking film.

There isn't a great deal else to the film. There is very little music, the sound all works (and I assume a significant portion of it was post-added, as it would have been exceptionally difficult to capture much of it), and the editing (by the two stars and the director) is perfect.

In short, this film is amazing, and it really made me want to go away and watch the other two parts of the trilogy again. I think I will. I still think Elephant is my favourite overall, but Gerry... well, it's given it a run for its money. 4.5 stars. Everything was pretty much perfect, but there was a tiny bit of magic missing somewhere to really leave me gasping. Though I'm still thinking about it, so maybe that magic will come later. It's definitely a film, I think, whose images will stick with me for a long time.

Not A Hat In Sight.

It's always kind of disappointing when you watch a film with the word 'cowboy' in the title and don't see a single person dressed up in the uniform. We all love cowboys, right?

Drugstore Cowboy did, however, foster an appreciation of Matt Dillon that I hadn't previously had. Gus Van Sant (who also put Dillon in his 1995 film To Die For) crafted this adaptation and pulled out a stellar performance from Dillon that put him on the map critically, well before his Oscar nom for (vomits on shoes) Crash in 2004.

Dillon plays Bob, a small-time thief married to Kelly Lynch's Dianne. They're both hopeless drug addicts, hanging out with Rick (James Le Gros) and Nadine (Heather Graham) with whom they put on elaborate melodramas to distract pharmacy (or drugstore - get it?) clerks whilst they sneak into the dispensary and nab whatever they can to get high. Run out of town by police officer Gentry (James Remar - it bugged me all through the film that I couldn't work out where I knew his face from, and a quick IMDb placed him as Samantha's long-term on-off lover Richard Wright in the Sex And The City series) they head cross-country and repeatedly get more than they bargain for. Eventually, Bob decides to go clean, something Dianne doesn't want - they break up, Bob reconvenes with an old friend Tom The Priest (William S Burroughs - hilarious) but still can't make it all work out for himself.

It's a different examination of addiction and what drives it, because it is not dark. These people aren't depressed. You don't often see them jumpy and pining for a fix. They like their drugs, they steal them, and they generally live happily ever after. It's surprisingly upbeat for the most part, unlike many other drug films (Oz titles Little Fish and Candy come to mind - and I'm not saying that downbeat drug films are bad. I quite like those two titles, especially the first. It's just... different.)

This is a very confident Gus Van Sant laying the foundations for a constantly eye-opening career with only his second feature (after the rarely-seen Mala Noche four years before.) You can feel him preparing for My Own Private Idaho, and even much later films such as Elephant, but he practices far more restraint precursing his more 'mainstream' product such as To Die For and his recent Milk. His specific stylings are evident, but they do not overpower the films.

All round, a very good film. There isn't a lot to criticise in it, except probably the fact that it doesn't quite hit you in the face like much of Van Sant's other work. It's still a 4 star effort, however.