If I had to make a bet, it would be that you, whoever is reading this, have not seen Southland Tales. Perhaps you do not know the name Richard Kelly. Let's clear those up right away - Richard Kelly is talented writer/director who gained cult notoriety through 2001's Donnie Darko, wrote a mess of a movie no one blames on him called Domino in 2005, and last year released Southland Tales, a movie that could be called "dark" because it's apocalyptic, or "light" because it takes place in sunny California on the eve of the apocalypse, or "kitschy" because it includes music videos, cars fucking, overdubs about the apocalypse, hands being chopped off, etc. Or it could be called a "negative utopia sci-fi thriller" because it's about world war, global gas crisis, a draft that has everyone panicked, and, you know, the apocalypse.
If that sounds confusing, well, let me say I haven't even started talking about the plot, which is about California in the midst of world war with Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and North Korea - oh right, a nuclear bomb has gone off in Abilene, Texas in 2005 (forgot that part), and now we're out of gas. So, a gas substitute that uses the power of the ocean controlled by a goofy megalomaniac played by Wallace Shawn. This is slowing the earth's rotation by .0000006, just enough to cause people to act irrationally - or so says a comparable screenplay by Boxer Santaros, played by The Rock (ne, Dwayne Johnson), who has recently woken up in the desert with amnesia and is now shacking up with Krista Now, a porn star/ media sensation played by Sarah Michelle Gellar. Boxer is also the son-in-law of the vice-presidential candidate in the 2008 election and married to Mandy Moore. Plus, there's a group of Neo-Marxist revolutionaries played by what seems like an entire season's worth of Saturday Night Live veterans - Amy Poehler, Jon Lovitz, Nora Dunn, and Cheri Oteri are the rebels. Also, Justin Timberlake is a scarred Iraq veteran that sometimes narrates with passages from the Book of Revelations. And there's Seann William Scott, who joins the neo-Marxist rebels to impersonate his identical twin brother, who's a cop, I think, but he is at least also played by Scott.
Alright, glad I got that out of the way. Sometimes it's necessary to write that description down just to make sure I had a grasp of the plot. When Southland Tales premiered at Cannes in 2006, it was seen as the biggest mess the festival had ever seen, or at least since the last overly self-indulgent movie no one could follow, Vincent Gallo's notorious The Brown Bunny, which many compared it to. Recently I watched Southland Tales, and I prepared for it - a friend and I discovered on Netflix it is listed in groups such as "100 Favorite Films of All Time" and simultaneously "The Worst Movies Ever Made." On that page, you can see a link to Roger Ebert's 1-star review, who complimented that the 2006 Cannes version of the movie had 26 minutes chopped off of it, but suggested to "keep whittling the movie down until it's the size of a toothpick." Also, Nathan Lee of The Village Voice named it the best movie of 2007.
Again, think of this as background. I've become convinced recently that Donnie Darko is one of the great movies of modern times. Many a college stoner certainly agrees with me, but think of it - Donnie Darko was released with no flair, critics ignored it, it barely played in even indie markets, and it managed to spawn midnight screenings, a theatrical rerelease, massive success on DVD, and launched Jake Gyllenhaal into becoming an A-list star. Watching it now, it does not surprise me that it became so successful, what surprises me is that critics didn't even notice it its first time around - are critics so skeptical of first time filmmakers? Its poppy 80's quasi-musical numbers and coming of age story alone, along with its rather uproarious sense of humor and playful satire makes me think the movie is unmistakably great, even before its time-travel head trip of a plot takes hold. Scenes in Donnie Darko are not particularly complicated, but they're hard to shake, and that's where it succeeded - it was a populist mind-bender.
There's nothing populist about Southland Tales, which seems like one grand exercise in getting people to not like it. For people who've contrasted the original version of Donnie Darko and its director's cut, there may be some reference - the director's cut is, honestly, not as good. It explains the movie's cryptic time-travel plot somewhat, but also adds too much, including stoner-heavy nonsequitor intercuts of fire and water and eyeballs, and grafts on more than its share of extraneous additional scenes, including a ludicrous dissection of Watership Down that supposedly decodes messages of urban sexuality. If I finished the director's cut surprised that it worked anyway, because the elemental Donnie Darko is such a strong movie, it made me most appreciate that movie's initial scene to scene rhythm, the perfection of what was left in it.
As I'm saying, Southland Tales is of this mindset - more stoner intercuts of fire and water, not to mention constant interruption of a news-media interflux, based on CNN, of scrolls and apocalyptic devastation elsewhere in the world. To be honest, the apocalypse and future mishegos of Southland Tales is more work than it's worth, although apparently it caused a release of three graphic novels to explain its labyrinthine backstory that opens the movie in a barrage of information (the movie, naturally, starts at "chapter 4"). But then again, there are so many elements that are more work than they are worth in Southland Tales that it strains to start there.
What keeps me thinking about Southland Tales is, I guess, my perspective on movies. Southland Tales gives you so many reasons to hate the movie, so many moments that are deeply frustrating and ridiculous, miles beyond kitsch or interest. But then again, other movies have frustrated me and been ridiculous, and I've wound up appreciating them. A few weeks ago at a friend's house, I brought some movies to hang out to and enjoy, and suggested a favorite of mine, Bob Fosse's All That Jazz, a great movie that I can enjoy simply for its visuals and thrilling editing. I thought this movie was relatively easy to enjoy, but as we were ten minutes into it, with its plot aggressively criss-crossed from one scene to another without much explanation in these early scenes, my friends were checked out and laughing at its 70's decor. I forget sometimes that I can't expect others to have the perspective I have with movies - since I was 13, I've been challenging myself with movies that were beyond my intelligence level, with movies whose meanings and ideas are unclear, with movies I watch just because I hear things that interest me about them. Others don't want that and don't have to, I suppose. What it means is that I've come to accept being uncomfortable with a movie, and distinguishing elements that work from elements that don't.
The ability to do these two things is what keeps me thinking about Southland Tales. There are so many moments that frustrate, and the plot is so gonzo ridiculous that I can't blame anyone for checking out. But I also think to simply label it as amongst "The Worst Movies Ever Made" is dishonest. As is, honestly, declaring it one of the best. I love movies that fill me with new ideas and surprise me with great moments, but overall, this movie, I think, barely comes in over the 50% mark - I'm happy that I saw it, I love the thoughts it makes me have, but I wouldn't say it's worth the work you put in.
That said, those great moments are GREAT. Every now and again, a scene will just happen, and it will be astonishing - a scene of amazing humor and heart and ideas that simply explodes on screen. The funniest moments on screen involve Gellar's porn empressario Krysta Now, a woman who named herself with the "Now" "in order to differentiate myself from the other 76 Krystas in the business" and has a modest radio hit with a song called "Teen Horniness Is Not A Crime," which can be heard briefly, in one of the movies most uproarious asides. I'm shocked that Kelly gathered the cast he did, as one idea is just weirder than the next - Cheri Oteri, in particular, is too bizarre to swallow. The woman who once obsessed on SNL about "The Perfect Cheer" as a Neo-Marxist rebel badass in dreadlocks? It's hard not to laugh, and, in that case, you're not supposed to.
Still, Gellar and Mandy Moore share one hysterical scene of cross-accusations around The Rock, that's like a soap opera on acid (and porn), and Nora Dunn, as another rebel calling herself "Deepthroat 2" is full of great lines as well (talking about losing people in Abilene - this movie's 9/11 - she states, "This may come as a shock to you, Mr Smallhouse, but I have lost two people in Abilene. Two of my four ex-husbands on a fishing trip, which they took every year to bitch about me."). I loved another scene in which Amy Poehler and Wood Harris (The Wire's great Avon Barksdale... like I said, weird casting) fake a domestic squabble to get a cop to show up, and I love the awful beat poem Poehler screams when the cop arrives. I love Gellar in general in this movie, her look is perfect, and a couple of scenes of her talk show ("Join us for an in-depth discussion of the penetrating issues facing society today. Issues like abortion, terrorism, crime, poverty, social reform, quantum teleportation, teen horniness and war") had me toppling over.
I laugh so rarely at the movies these days, thinking every comedy I see is, in fact, not all that funny, that these scenes are worth the 2 hours that surround them. Beyond that, though, is one particular scene that is funny, touching, weird, brilliant, and truly, a revelation. I don't know how to describe it except to say it's unlike the rest of the movie, which is already not really like anything.
In the scene, Justin Timberlake, who up to this point has been irritating us with voiceover passages from The Book of Revelations, breaks out into an arcade-hall music video lipsynching the Killers' "All The Things That I've Done." He's wearing a shirt straight out of Donnie Darko, except its design - a bird-looking inkblot on a tight white t-shirt - seems to be made out of blood. We've already seen a rather unsightly scar around his eye, and know that he is a veteran of "World War 3" in Iraq, and now he's a sharpshooter. As the scene begins, in the middle of the song, cutting straight to its "I got soul but I'm not a soldier" tagline, it seems stupid, and as the backup dancers start with him, it seems stupider. But as it continues, full of grinding hot girls in skimpy outfits and Timberlake dumping beer on himself, something else takes hold - the unmistakable look of terror and pain in his eyes. Is it wrong of me to think of this scene as a statement of the mind-altering effects of war? Timberlake is so astonishingly communicative in this number, there's no way not to think that - he, rather fearlessly, shows us a life. And by roping us in with a music number, we don't even notice it happening.
I did not expect that scene, but it strikes me, individualy, as four of the best minutes in movies last year, and last year had many many great moments in movies. This is what I mean when I say that it's worth seeing Southland Tales - you need the rather bogus context surrounding the scenes that work, because Kelly, gifted and offputting crank that he is, can truly make a scene work.
If that sounds confusing, well, let me say I haven't even started talking about the plot, which is about California in the midst of world war with Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and North Korea - oh right, a nuclear bomb has gone off in Abilene, Texas in 2005 (forgot that part), and now we're out of gas. So, a gas substitute that uses the power of the ocean controlled by a goofy megalomaniac played by Wallace Shawn. This is slowing the earth's rotation by .0000006, just enough to cause people to act irrationally - or so says a comparable screenplay by Boxer Santaros, played by The Rock (ne, Dwayne Johnson), who has recently woken up in the desert with amnesia and is now shacking up with Krista Now, a porn star/ media sensation played by Sarah Michelle Gellar. Boxer is also the son-in-law of the vice-presidential candidate in the 2008 election and married to Mandy Moore. Plus, there's a group of Neo-Marxist revolutionaries played by what seems like an entire season's worth of Saturday Night Live veterans - Amy Poehler, Jon Lovitz, Nora Dunn, and Cheri Oteri are the rebels. Also, Justin Timberlake is a scarred Iraq veteran that sometimes narrates with passages from the Book of Revelations. And there's Seann William Scott, who joins the neo-Marxist rebels to impersonate his identical twin brother, who's a cop, I think, but he is at least also played by Scott.
Alright, glad I got that out of the way. Sometimes it's necessary to write that description down just to make sure I had a grasp of the plot. When Southland Tales premiered at Cannes in 2006, it was seen as the biggest mess the festival had ever seen, or at least since the last overly self-indulgent movie no one could follow, Vincent Gallo's notorious The Brown Bunny, which many compared it to. Recently I watched Southland Tales, and I prepared for it - a friend and I discovered on Netflix it is listed in groups such as "100 Favorite Films of All Time" and simultaneously "The Worst Movies Ever Made." On that page, you can see a link to Roger Ebert's 1-star review, who complimented that the 2006 Cannes version of the movie had 26 minutes chopped off of it, but suggested to "keep whittling the movie down until it's the size of a toothpick." Also, Nathan Lee of The Village Voice named it the best movie of 2007.
Again, think of this as background. I've become convinced recently that Donnie Darko is one of the great movies of modern times. Many a college stoner certainly agrees with me, but think of it - Donnie Darko was released with no flair, critics ignored it, it barely played in even indie markets, and it managed to spawn midnight screenings, a theatrical rerelease, massive success on DVD, and launched Jake Gyllenhaal into becoming an A-list star. Watching it now, it does not surprise me that it became so successful, what surprises me is that critics didn't even notice it its first time around - are critics so skeptical of first time filmmakers? Its poppy 80's quasi-musical numbers and coming of age story alone, along with its rather uproarious sense of humor and playful satire makes me think the movie is unmistakably great, even before its time-travel head trip of a plot takes hold. Scenes in Donnie Darko are not particularly complicated, but they're hard to shake, and that's where it succeeded - it was a populist mind-bender.
There's nothing populist about Southland Tales, which seems like one grand exercise in getting people to not like it. For people who've contrasted the original version of Donnie Darko and its director's cut, there may be some reference - the director's cut is, honestly, not as good. It explains the movie's cryptic time-travel plot somewhat, but also adds too much, including stoner-heavy nonsequitor intercuts of fire and water and eyeballs, and grafts on more than its share of extraneous additional scenes, including a ludicrous dissection of Watership Down that supposedly decodes messages of urban sexuality. If I finished the director's cut surprised that it worked anyway, because the elemental Donnie Darko is such a strong movie, it made me most appreciate that movie's initial scene to scene rhythm, the perfection of what was left in it.
As I'm saying, Southland Tales is of this mindset - more stoner intercuts of fire and water, not to mention constant interruption of a news-media interflux, based on CNN, of scrolls and apocalyptic devastation elsewhere in the world. To be honest, the apocalypse and future mishegos of Southland Tales is more work than it's worth, although apparently it caused a release of three graphic novels to explain its labyrinthine backstory that opens the movie in a barrage of information (the movie, naturally, starts at "chapter 4"). But then again, there are so many elements that are more work than they are worth in Southland Tales that it strains to start there.
What keeps me thinking about Southland Tales is, I guess, my perspective on movies. Southland Tales gives you so many reasons to hate the movie, so many moments that are deeply frustrating and ridiculous, miles beyond kitsch or interest. But then again, other movies have frustrated me and been ridiculous, and I've wound up appreciating them. A few weeks ago at a friend's house, I brought some movies to hang out to and enjoy, and suggested a favorite of mine, Bob Fosse's All That Jazz, a great movie that I can enjoy simply for its visuals and thrilling editing. I thought this movie was relatively easy to enjoy, but as we were ten minutes into it, with its plot aggressively criss-crossed from one scene to another without much explanation in these early scenes, my friends were checked out and laughing at its 70's decor. I forget sometimes that I can't expect others to have the perspective I have with movies - since I was 13, I've been challenging myself with movies that were beyond my intelligence level, with movies whose meanings and ideas are unclear, with movies I watch just because I hear things that interest me about them. Others don't want that and don't have to, I suppose. What it means is that I've come to accept being uncomfortable with a movie, and distinguishing elements that work from elements that don't.
The ability to do these two things is what keeps me thinking about Southland Tales. There are so many moments that frustrate, and the plot is so gonzo ridiculous that I can't blame anyone for checking out. But I also think to simply label it as amongst "The Worst Movies Ever Made" is dishonest. As is, honestly, declaring it one of the best. I love movies that fill me with new ideas and surprise me with great moments, but overall, this movie, I think, barely comes in over the 50% mark - I'm happy that I saw it, I love the thoughts it makes me have, but I wouldn't say it's worth the work you put in.
That said, those great moments are GREAT. Every now and again, a scene will just happen, and it will be astonishing - a scene of amazing humor and heart and ideas that simply explodes on screen. The funniest moments on screen involve Gellar's porn empressario Krysta Now, a woman who named herself with the "Now" "in order to differentiate myself from the other 76 Krystas in the business" and has a modest radio hit with a song called "Teen Horniness Is Not A Crime," which can be heard briefly, in one of the movies most uproarious asides. I'm shocked that Kelly gathered the cast he did, as one idea is just weirder than the next - Cheri Oteri, in particular, is too bizarre to swallow. The woman who once obsessed on SNL about "The Perfect Cheer" as a Neo-Marxist rebel badass in dreadlocks? It's hard not to laugh, and, in that case, you're not supposed to.
Still, Gellar and Mandy Moore share one hysterical scene of cross-accusations around The Rock, that's like a soap opera on acid (and porn), and Nora Dunn, as another rebel calling herself "Deepthroat 2" is full of great lines as well (talking about losing people in Abilene - this movie's 9/11 - she states, "This may come as a shock to you, Mr Smallhouse, but I have lost two people in Abilene. Two of my four ex-husbands on a fishing trip, which they took every year to bitch about me."). I loved another scene in which Amy Poehler and Wood Harris (The Wire's great Avon Barksdale... like I said, weird casting) fake a domestic squabble to get a cop to show up, and I love the awful beat poem Poehler screams when the cop arrives. I love Gellar in general in this movie, her look is perfect, and a couple of scenes of her talk show ("Join us for an in-depth discussion of the penetrating issues facing society today. Issues like abortion, terrorism, crime, poverty, social reform, quantum teleportation, teen horniness and war") had me toppling over.
I laugh so rarely at the movies these days, thinking every comedy I see is, in fact, not all that funny, that these scenes are worth the 2 hours that surround them. Beyond that, though, is one particular scene that is funny, touching, weird, brilliant, and truly, a revelation. I don't know how to describe it except to say it's unlike the rest of the movie, which is already not really like anything.
In the scene, Justin Timberlake, who up to this point has been irritating us with voiceover passages from The Book of Revelations, breaks out into an arcade-hall music video lipsynching the Killers' "All The Things That I've Done." He's wearing a shirt straight out of Donnie Darko, except its design - a bird-looking inkblot on a tight white t-shirt - seems to be made out of blood. We've already seen a rather unsightly scar around his eye, and know that he is a veteran of "World War 3" in Iraq, and now he's a sharpshooter. As the scene begins, in the middle of the song, cutting straight to its "I got soul but I'm not a soldier" tagline, it seems stupid, and as the backup dancers start with him, it seems stupider. But as it continues, full of grinding hot girls in skimpy outfits and Timberlake dumping beer on himself, something else takes hold - the unmistakable look of terror and pain in his eyes. Is it wrong of me to think of this scene as a statement of the mind-altering effects of war? Timberlake is so astonishingly communicative in this number, there's no way not to think that - he, rather fearlessly, shows us a life. And by roping us in with a music number, we don't even notice it happening.
I did not expect that scene, but it strikes me, individualy, as four of the best minutes in movies last year, and last year had many many great moments in movies. This is what I mean when I say that it's worth seeing Southland Tales - you need the rather bogus context surrounding the scenes that work, because Kelly, gifted and offputting crank that he is, can truly make a scene work.
