Sin #74: When Good Goes Bad

It all starts with a rebellious teenager. Donnie’s got issues; first of all, he has strange visions of a man dressed as a grotesque rabbit who apparently knows when the world will end, then he gets obsessed with black holes (with some astonishing revelations) and time travel.

“Donnie Darko” is the brilliant debut of Richard Kelly, and it is simply a formidable calling card that became an instant midnight cult film. People saw Kelly as a director of great ambition and imagination and expected mighty things of his next movie. Unfortunately he delivered one of the most wretched pieces of entertainment of its year with his “Southland Tales”, which is an incoherent mess of epic proportions.

While “Donnie Darko” focused intently on its hero, “Southland” is scattered all over the place in an unconvincing futuristic dystopia that never comes to life. The first mistake is its quirky and unconventional casting that ranges from The Rock to several members of Saturday Night Live (not to mention Justin Timberlake in an inexplicable role; he also gets to deliver one of the most awkward musical scenes I’ve seen while covering The Killers’ All the Things That I’ve Done).

Even though “Southland Tales” is a complete failure, I still had faith in Kelly. Surely he would see the mistakes of it and return to his roots by making a more grounded story. He surely tried with “The Box” but sadly with it, he has taken an intriguing premise and run it to the ground in a smorgasbord of overall lunacy and absurdity. The film starts promisingly as a mysterious man hands a couple a box with a single button; if they press it they win exactly one million dollars but someone they don’t know will die. The next events in the movie are impossible to predict since they head into the realm of cheesy existentialistic sci-fi (how far does the story remove itself from its earlier scenes!).

There are some directors who seem to walk a tight rope every time they make a movie; you never know if they will succeed or fail. Terry Gilliam is one of them. While “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” was an entertaining and lovable fantasy, “Tideland” descended into perversity while being incredibly dull. Kevin Smith is another example since his stories usually involve junkies and fart jokes. In his best movies (like the great “Dogma”) he is able to combine an adolescent kind of humor with some pretty meaningful themes (well, not really that meaningful but sweet). Recently however, Smith sold out with the appropriately titled “Cop Out” which is one of the dumbest cop buddy movies I’ve ever seen. Here is another film hammered by some irritating casting decisions. By making Tracy Morgan into the obnoxious sidekick, Smith has made the movie unbearable (it is important to say that this is the first movie he has directed in which he didn’t write the script, hence the lazy jokes). Desperation quickly crawls into this vacuous vortex and the movie remains painfully unfunny throughout even though it’s in a desperate bid to remain entertaining.

I’m afraid Kelly will never do something as intriguing and powerful as “Donnie Darko” (and by the way, I’m pretending the sequel “S.Darko” doesn’t actually exist). He remains a man of big ideas but somehow he is unable to channel them successfully. With “Southland Tales” and “The Box” he reveals himself as basically a one-trick pony. On the other hand I still believe in Gilliam and Smith because they’ve showed me their strengths on more than one occasion and they remain engaging and creative filmmakers. I think they work better outside the system, inside the independent and art-house constraints whose limitations can be seen as more of a blessing than a curse.

Sin #73: Most Wanted

The increasing violence and insecurity have risen to dangerous heights across the Mexican country; in a sense, some towns near the border have resorted to the ways of the Wild West by turning the desert into a battlefield. The bloodshed, product of the drug war, has gotten worst over the months and now seems to taint the bicentenary celebration of September in many cities (Monterrey has been the city most affected by the violence, not to mention natural catastrophes that have devastated several urban areas).

Society has always had an affinity for violence and the Western genre has always been a formidable way of focusing it and simplifying its conflicts. There are the good guys (handsome, proud and honorable men) on one side and the villains (ugly, despicable killers) on another. The good guys inevitably win the fights and the bystanders cheer as the heroes ride victorious into the sunset.

For a taste of the genre there’s no better introduction than playing “Red Dead Redemption”, a videogame for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 developed by Rockstar that takes the “Grand Theft Auto” engine and transports it to the Wild West in a story of revenge and, indeed, redemption (for those fans of GTA, I got to say that many staples are still present including pillaging and going on an endless murdering rampage). It’s a cinematic experience that’s engrossing and utterly involving, not to mention a lot of fun (without a doubt it’s yet another triumph for Rockstar).

In cinematic terms, the genre has had its ups and downs. For a while westerns became opportunities for character actors like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood to develop their tough-guy personas, but then its popularity fizzled and westerns were perceived as almost an ancient relic of dated clichés.

Today, the genre has made a comeback (with some original works like “Appaloosa” and several remakes, like the Coens’ version of “True Grit”, soon to be released with Jeff Bridges in the John Wayne role); some films have even risen from their ancient roots by injecting new life into their stories, like the “3:10 to Yuma” remake starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale.

“3:10 to Yuma” introduces a story ripe for clichés but director James Mangold keeps the action real and focuses on the acting of its talented cast. Crowe creates an intriguing villain, suave, mysterious and very capable of exploding in terrible acts of violence and yet, charming and likable. Ben Forster is the true monster of the piece as a young man on the mission of rescuing his mentor. Bale is a farmer longing for the respect of his family.

The movie follows these characters on a doomed journey but I liked its ending which finds the right balance between poetic truth and irony.

A very different kind of western comes in the form of a Korean movie (I know the phrase Korean western sounds bizarre) called “The Good, the Bad and the Weird” which isn’t a parody of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” but more of a tribute to that classic film. It’s equal parts Sergio Leone and “Kung Fu Hustle”. The movie follows a group of characters in search of a buried treasure (the characters make a leap of faith since none of them knows exactly what’s buried).

The great thing about “The Good, the Bad and the Weird” is its endless invention and great energy; it features astonishing cinematography (especially in a virtuoso opening scene inside a train), a fantastic soundtrack and performances that never wink at the audience. It’s a joyful adventure.

These movies are current examples of a genre that gets constantly reinvented, and since the truth is always stranger than fiction, it’s nice to see stories where the good guys actually win and can ride proudly into the sunset.

Sin #72: Confessions

Documentaries have a way of packing much more of an emotion wallop than the usual sensationalistic stories we hear from the news. They provide a personal input and tap directly into the psyche of their subjects, drawing us in. A few weeks ago I saw a documentary called "Dear Zachary: A Letter to A Son About His Father" that features one of the most shocking stories I've ever seen on the screen. It all starts with Andrew Bagby, a medical student with two wonderful parents and great friends (the movie is directed by Kurt Kuenne, one of his close friends). Andrew is lonely and depressed in his internship and one day meets a medical resident named Shelley Turner (a woman in her 40s that has already 3 estranged children from different men). His friends know that something is very wrong with her but Andrew starts dating her for a while; he then senses her jealousy and manic depressive tendencies and tries to leave Shelley. In a violent rampage she kills him and flees the country. What happens next is truly horrific as justice lets Dr. Turner walk away and then she reveals that she is pregnant with Andrew's son.

The story of "Dear Zachary" is the stuff of tabloid glory and a more morbid filmmaker could easily have turned it into a soap opera of unnerving melodrama. Fortunately the movie never takes that road and instead it becomes a powerful tragedy of a failed system and the suffering of an entire community (the one bright spot in the whole piece is the heroism shown by Andrew’s parents, who have faced terrible struggles).

Another amazing work is “Tarnation” in which a man named Jonathan Couette makes a home movie documenting his life. Within a 200 dollar budget, the use of editing tools from a Macintosh computer, hours of video footage and family pictures, it goes very deep and affects us with its protagonist’s honesty.

“Tarnation” doesn’t feel like a regular movie and sometimes enters into the realm of conceptual video art with its use of old movie footage and kaleidoscopic color scheme; it’s like a video diary on acid but its accumulative power is undeniable. The footage Couette captures related to his psychological disturbed mother reminded me of the family footage in “Capturing the Friedmans”, another disturbing and haunting work that focuses on the destruction of the family nucleus after the shocking accusation of the father’s pederasty. The details of the case sometimes go on such a level of pornographic detail that it makes us recoil in disgust but, just like a car wreck, we can’t look away. The Friedmans are so tormented by the sins of the father that they remain a fascinating case for any psychiatrist and a hypnotic voyage into madness for audiences.

These three documentaries feature some of the most harrowing scenes in recent memory and subjects that are intrinsically frail and weak, in other words, completely human. While none offer comfort at the end and leave us really in a state of emotional exhaustion, they create a stark portrait of the dark nature of man.