It took most of a decade for Richard Kelly to finish his follow-up to Donnie Darko. Preceded by an elaborate website, forestalled with three even more elaborate prequel graphic novels, and plagued by delays for improved special effects, Southland Tales has  only just been finally released on DVD (by which time its slightly-in-the-future setting, the summer of 2008, begins to seem not so slightly-in-the-future). When it originally premiered in May 2006 at the Cannes Film Festival, it bombed and received a tiny release a year later – mostly in the Southland, as it happens, and LA. This is all despite a jam-packed cast of recognizable stars: The Rock (aka Dwayne Johnson), Sean William Scott, Justin Timberlake, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore, and many more. Largely dismissed by the few critics who did review it, their most common phrase in describing Southland Tales was “a mess.”

Now, a “mess” isn’t always a bad thing. Every Thomas Pynchon book redefines “mess,” and it works at least sometimes – The Crying of Lot 49 is surely America’s finest post-war novel (sometimes it doesn’t work, though – his most recent novel, Against the Day, lacks any sort of weight or feeling to it except a few oblique references to “the day”). And the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski is a masterpiece of mess, mixing bowling, a convoluted case of mistaken identity, more bowling, a progressively less-dangerous crime story, more bowling, and joke after joke (“say you what you want about National Socialism,” says the religious Jew, comparing the Nazi party to a group of self-styled Nihilists, “but at least it’s an ethos”).

Southland Tales tries the same tactics, except, to be honest, it isn’t that convoluted, isn’t that confusing, and isn’t that much of a mess. It makes perfect, logical, linear sense all the way through, with maybe a few twisting allegiances here and a bit of pseudoscience there. The fact that it was considered impenetrable only speaks poorly to the intelligence of American audiences.

Hint: Pilot Abilene’s repeated references to the Book of Revelations are there for a reason. The story is a retelling of the Christian end of days. The Baron, playing one side against another, is the Devil; Krysta Now, the former porn star, is Mary Magdalene; Boxer Santaros, also known in his psychic screenplay as Jericho Cane (note: JC), is Jesus Christ; Roland Taverner, along with his alter ego Ronald, is the second coming who causes the end of the world – and, possibly, the beginning of a new one, or at least a new reality – by meeting his past self and disrupting the space-time continuum. (All this isn’t much of a spoiler, seeing as it won’t make much sense to someone who hasn’t seen the film.)

What is most befuddling about the movie is how critics reacted to it. It is no messier than the average David Lynch movie, and Southland Tales’s Rebekah Del Rio song is surely a reference to her piece in Mulholland Drive. Kelly is funnier than Lynch, though, if less talented visually: think of the porn star’s boldly daft proclamation, “The New York Times said that God is dead.”

Or Jon Lovitz’s absurd turn as a blond-haired dirty cop.

Or a “Neo-Marxist” woman’s statement that, “these Hollywood managers, they think their shit doesn’t smell,” and her big-time trouble-making friend’s observation that, “when the shit hits the fan, it all smells the same.”

Or two SUVs “pork[ing] each other,” a perfect metaphor for the American obsession with the car as a sex symbol.

Or a porn star’s realization, “what happens when a woman has sex on a flight from London to Los Angeles, then takes the morning-after pill while flying across the time zone? Then it becomes the morning-before pill!”

Or Sarah Michelle Gellar’s perfect imitation of Britney Spears’ pop song, “Teen Horniness is Not a Crime” – “I never said it was,” says the staid vice-presidential candidate.

Southland Tales has one major flaw. Jake Gyllenhaal’s moody, depressive, disturbed turn as the titular teenager in Donnie Darko was an eminently sympathetic performance and formed the emotional basis of the film. It was hard not to root for such a lost soul. Southland Tales has no such character. Watching the film, one feels utter regret that Kelly didn’t simply include a scene or two depicting The Rock’s helplessness in the face of his amnesia or Sean William Scott’s stunned confusion in the face of his soul being literally split in two. Both actors give strong performances, but a little emotion in the middle of the absurdity would have gone a long way.

Richard Kelly’s next film is The Box, a Cameron Diaz-starring studio flick. Maybe it will take a step away from what gives his films their absurdist quality, since a major studio would never accept a Southland Tales-type film in a Cameron Diaz vehicle. Cynics would say Kelly needs outside direction, as occurred in Donnie Darko (but not in the inferior Donnie Darko director’s cut nor in Southland Tales), in order to reign in his worst tendencies. We shall see. Still, even at its worst, Southland Tales is clearly a work of passion rather than ambition, of time rather than impulse. It is hard to criticize Kelly for that.

Southland Tales grade: B–.

Comments

---

Post a Comment

Name:       Title:

Email Address:

Security Code:
Comment: (XHTML is allowed. Innapropriate material will be deleted.)