Hey folks, Harry here... Just a bit of an update here... The first film that our pretty boy Robie talks about... MAELSTROM has just been picked up by ARROW ENTERTAINMENT, so it'll be seen. However, THE BELIEVER has yet to find a home, but most likely it will soon. Till then read on...
Indians, Anti-Semites, female-to-male transsexuals and talking fish. Hooray! Dig it. If you want to make a successful Sundance film, put all of those into your movie. I got them spread out over four flicks during the course of one day and I’m still pretty dizzy. You ask why Moriarty and my reports are a little late, don’t ya’? Because we saw more movies than anyone else, man. And also because instead of writing I tried picking up on girls. I should’ve stuck to writing…
Maelstrom starts with a talking fish and ends with a talking fish and there’s a whole lot of pretension in between. It’s not that the film is forcefully, in your face "I’m too arty for words" high on itself. In the very least writer/director Denis Villeneuve has the good sense to realize that the whole concept of the narrator – said fish – is ridiculously goofy. No, the pretension here comes in the manner in which the story spools out. Gaze upon our heroine, see her accidentally kill a man, see her fall in love with the man’s son, watch her inner turmoil and dig those crazy filters on the camera. It’s all very pretty and well acted and about as engaging as a heart attack.
The film opens with images of abortions, death and fish butchery. It’s supposed to be the kind of thing that assaults us, that dares us for being in the theater. Yawn. Marie-Josee Croze’s Bibane is undoubtedly beautiful, yet the chaos that engulfs her life after she accidentally kills a fish monger feels too pedestrian. I’m sad, I’m sad, I’m driving off a pier, I’m still sad. There are signs all over the place that Villeneuve doesn’t take this too seriously. Like, say, the talking fish. In making a film that pokes fun at the dire, serious take on the story, though, he’s relegated himself to a different level of artifice. The ending is sublimely ridiculous; the fish tells us that he’s going to reveal the secret of the universe but right before he gets the words out the butcher’s knife falls and cuts his head off. Fin, end of story and I love it. I just don’t love the rest of the movie.
I’m of mixed feeling on The Believer. On one hand it’s got a staggering, 100-bucks-he’s-the-next-Ed-Norton performance by Ryan Gosling. It’s also extremely well written, bracing and jarring and ugly a lot of the time and not scared to delve down deep into the main character’s Anti-Semitism. It digs even deeper into his self-loathing, though – he was born a Jew – and that inner conflict, played so well by Gosling, is the source of the movie’s true power. What breaks down is simple logic and a few narrative choices in a few key points; a film that builds so well as a masterful character study should never turn into a "there’s a bomb in the building, everybody run!" deal, and there are some dream sequences here that are so obvious in their message it’s as if writer/director Henry Bean jumped into the audience, clubbed them on their heads, held up a sign with the message on it, pointed to it and said, "See?!? Get it?!!????" Problems aside The Believer is still an incredibly powerful film, and it winning the best drama award at the festival wasn’t a surprise.
From an early age Danny Balint (Gosling) considered God a bully, and by the late teens Danny has revolted against his Jewish upbringing and embraced a hatred of all things Jewish. Kid walks around with a shaved head and a giant swastika on his shirt. He’s not a fool, though; though his ideologies are corrupt he’s an extremely bright young man, well-versed and persuasive. Persuasive to closeted neo-nazis – they call themselves fascists to stave bigger controversy – Billy Zane and Theresa Russell. Persuasive to Russell’s daughter Summer Phoenix. Persuasive to a big, big band of skinhead followers. Danny wants to start killing Jews, says that people spit out the word the same way they spit out "rat" and soon becomes the neo-nazi movement’s leading voice. And as the hatred around him grows so too grows his own hatred for himself and what he has become.
Movies like The Believer are the kind of thing I hoped to see at Sundance. Ballsy as hell, not willing to compromise, not the kind of thing you’d ever see coming out of a studio. The movie wouldn’t have worked half as well if the relationships Danny has with those around him weren’t so convincing. You wonder at first why a true beauty like Phoenix would ever fall for Gosling’s character, and then as the story spools out you see how utterly messed up the girl really is. No big speeches of "I’m not loved," no forced sense of being screwed up, just strong, revealing writing from Bean and an honest, genuinely-feeling-broken performance by Phoenix.
What doesn’t work so well is the third act. There are a lot of messy motivations to tie up, and none of them are really knotted down as well as they should have been. Danny’s has visions throughout the movie inspired by a story a Holocaust survivor told. The survivor watched his son die at the hands of a German officer. Danny sees himself as the officer in the initial visions. In the final vision he sees himself as the officer AND as the Jewish father. Well, duh. The end of the film, with Danny finally realizing that he can’t escape who he is, is handled in the same pedestrian manner. They’re minor quibbles (that’s a really lame word, eh?) in an otherwise strong, strong movie. If Gosling is anywhere near this good in future roles film lovers should consider themselves real lucky. If Bean keeps building on what he’s done here, we’re twice blessed.
The documentary Southern Comfort is about something fascinating, something we’ve never seen before. Robert Eads is a female-to-male transsexual living in rural Georgia (and I mean rural). Got a little trailer, got a great smile and got a loving, caring partner in Lola Cola, a male-to-female transsexual. Got great friends in Maxwell and Cases, his two female-to-male transsexual "sons." He’s also got ovarian cancer, and over 20 doctors have denied him treatment. Some out of disgust, some out of embarrassment and all because they’re a whole lot more heartless than they think. Robert is dying, and Southern Comfort chronicles the last year of his life. If only filmmaker Kate Davis was competent enough to properly document the story. What should be utterly transfixing falls a little flat, and the blame rests squarely on Davis’ shoulders. Documentaries are about a lot more than clicking the camera on and letting things roll.
We see Ads final meeting with his parents. In theory it should be heartbreaking, and the knowledge of all the real-life pain and misunderstanding on screen is tough. It’s just not shot all that well, though. The frames of film themselves should’ve bleed out the sadness; instead Davis is too cold an observer. Not that she should have wrung sentimentality out of the story. It’s just that there should’ve been more signs of life from behind the lens. Southern Comfort is a good documentary about a tragic, important story. It’s too bad the film doesn’t live up to the real life. But really, when does it ever?
Good intentions only go so far. The Doe Boy proves that again and again. It’s about as sweet a movie as you’re likely to find at Sundance, all warm charm and subdued, quiet performances and lazy-as-a-stream plotting, and there’s real appeal in lead James Duvall. That appeal is fleeting, though; whenever he opens his mouth it puffs away like a magic trick. It’s less because Duvall can’t act (give him the right role and he’s fine) and more because writer/director Randy Redwood has come up with a blandly written first draft of a film. A million big ideas aren’t followed up on. The thing isn’t directed all that well either and there’s nothing all that engaging about the story. It’s very sweet, very predictable and, in the end, inconsequential.
Just because something is a small, quiet, confined story doesn’t mean it’s slight. Look at Lynch’s The Straight Story. Simple, profound and beautiful. The Doe Boy would’ve worked if it had gotten at the marrow of Hunter’s (Duvall’s) character, if it had really made a point of developing the idea that he’s a weak kid relegated to second-class citizen because he accidentally killed a doe as a young boy. Instead there’s a half developed relationship with his father (Kevin Anderson), a half developed relationship with a pretty girl (Jeri Arrendondo), a not developed at all subplot about Hunter possibly having AIDS and a not quite developed idea about Hunter becoming a true hunter.
Some of this might have sold if Redwood was a better director. The film feels herky jerky. There are awkward zooms during shots, scenes framed up ineptly, characters lit poorly…the script feels like a first draft, and the film itself feels like an initial run through.
No doubt there’s real sentiment behind all this, and it’s about time we got more films about Native Americans. They should be better than this, though. It’s not a practical or even feasible solution, but if The Doe Boy were ever to really work – to be more than a slight piece of drama – it would need another rewrite and Redroad would have to become a better director. What should fly here crashes and damn, I hate bagging on a movie this well intentioned. But that’s just the way it is.
