i put all of the reading, all of the back-alley gossip, and all of the speculation to rest last night when i went to the theatre with hilery and two friends to see the new vincent gallo film, the brown bunny. it's tough to approach any movie objectively when you have read as much about it as i have. anybody who likes indie movies and has an internet connection has already formed an opinion about this film. of course, certain parts of the film (and certain parts of a certain actor) have been talked about in the press more than the piece as a whole, other than to say it was wholly a piece of shit. well, i saw the final version last night, and i liked it.
first of all, i have a fond affection for any movie involving a guy driving a dodge van around for a couple of hours. that aside, i like gallo's acting style. he has that cool detached quality most of the time, but every once in a while, he lets the performance zoom in to a point where you see him as tortured and vulnerable. surprisingly, he isn't on screen as much as you would think if you have any knowledge of his artisitic choices in his other film and music projects. about one quarter of the movie is devoted to unbroken shots out the front window of his van. he drives through small towns, over mountains, through the desert, through rainstorms. sometimes, these driving shots are accompanied by music, and he made an especially nice choice with ted curson's "tears for dolphy" playing during the new hampshire shots. in a midwestern drizzle, he offers a gordon lightfoot song in its entirety.
so here you have a movie with a four-minute gordon lightfoot song shown against a single, unbroken shot of windshield wipers on a windshield and the back of a semi truck. it's not a movie for everyone. i found it quiet and poetic — there is a scene with cheryl tiegs at a rest stop that tells volumes with almost no spoken dialogue, another where vincent's character is shown unloading his motorcycle and riding it off into the desert — but throughout the whole thing, i was subconsciously waiting for the sex scene that i had heard so much about.
here's where it gets tricky, because the movie has gained noteriety for being really bad, really boring, and for one really explicit sex scene at the very end. i was a little confused going into the theatre, not only because i had heard so much about the sex at the end of the movie, but also because i had no idea how i was going to put that thought out of my head and simply enjoy the first hour and fifteen minutes. luckily, the first scene of a motorcycle race drew me in and held me there. you see the bikes going around and around a race track as the camera zooms in on one bike. on it is the hero, and all of the other motorcycles are left out of the frame. it's just you and him going around the track. the whine of the engines fill the soundtrack until they are faded out, so you see bud's motorcycle taking tight turns in almost total silence. he hits a straightaway and the engines are mixed back into the soundtrack. i thought it was perfect, because it's the closest approximation i've ever seen of somebody in the zone. you know the zone, when every sensory item or feeling dissolves and it's just you and the instrument. all of a sudden, it's just him and the bike.
the scene at the end is a tough one to watch. it's rather cruel, and it tells more about the ugliness and unpleasant nature of bud's character than the entire rest of the movie. but it also gives a fantastic resolution to the story. i wouldn't call it a surprise ending, because you see it coming, but i would call it a justified ending. all of a sudden the movie makes sense, which is exactly what you need when you've been sitting there for an hour and fifteen minutes wondering what the hell it all means.
Posted by snackfight at September 23, 2004 05:35 PM