Frownland

Director Ronald Bronstein

 

FROWNLAND                      B-                   

USA  (106 mi)  2007 d:  Ronald Bronstein   

A relentless, unsettling and wretchedly unforgiving film that’s not only in-your-face, but occasionally resorts to a sledgehammer approach.  Written, directed and edited by Bronstein, this is as confrontational as filmmaking gets emphasizing an extremely difficult subject matter, the life and tribulations of a man on the edge who’s borderline coherent suffering from a psychotic anxiety syndrome of some kind along with a brain deficiency, nauseatingly annoying to anyone he speaks to as he prolongs the agony of the ordeal by never quite spitting out whatever he has to say, requiring an amazing amount of patience and tolerance just to listen to him but also to pry oneself away, requirements that the human condition simply lacks.  In this film, Keith (Dore Mann) resembles the kind of intense, deeply agitated sicko most people avoid like the plague and here he’s in nearly every shot.  He has a suicidal girl friend Laura (Mary Wall, the director’s wife) who appears to have a psychotic fear of closeness, spending most of the film in tears while in his company, actually stabbing him with a push pin when he accidentally comes too close.  Stuttering for words, apologizing profusely for taking up people’s time, Keith goes door to door selling discount coupons that allegedly raise funds for victims of multiple sclerosis, a profession he’s obviously not cut out for, and while it’s surprising some actually listen patiently at their doors while he tries to spit out the right words, he never makes a single sale and is ridiculed and bullied by his supervisor and fellow co-workers who accompany him to and from his route.  It’s a troublesome film filled with nothing but troublesome moments, told in a realistic manner with Ulrich Seidl anti-humanist overtones where an unending tone of abject miserablism reveals what a rotten life he has.  Commercial filmmaking this is not, but it’s not exactly riveting either, and at least for the first half, there’s nothing drawing the audience into his world. 

That changes when we realize what an erudite and pompous ass his roommate is (Charles, played by Paul Grimstad), a stark contrast that obviously feels contrived, as in the real world, one would have nothing to do with the other.  So Charles, to express his annoyance with Keith’s smothering behavior, refuses to pay the electric bill, leaving them both in the dark.  This is typical of how people treat Keith, as the general rule is to abuse him as often as one can get away with, as if this somehow makes people feel superior.  Accordingly, viewers are implicated, as a pervasive impulse leaves audiences themselves laughing at the character, as if laughing at a “retard” onscreen has become acceptable social behavior.  Bronstein is a first time filmmaker who brings with him an Andrew Bujalski semi-hip audience that may have been swayed by critic Amy Taubin’s belief that Bujalski’s minimalist realism is the voice of the new generation, targeting an educated middle class that can't ever make up their minds about anything, who exist totally in a world of ambivalence spending their time at dead-end temp jobs that offer no challenge of any kind, resorting to snarky dialogue of stoned sarcasm that is used like a weapon, where putting down others is a major accomplishment in their day.  Yet films like this suggest Bronstein may speak for a “fucked up” generation that takes great amusement in their own dysfunctional perversities.  Keith is by no means stupid, but he has a pathological inability to communicate.  Somehow the audience mirrors the society at-large, tapping into that theater of being obnoxious when humor comes at someone else’s expense, where the greater Keith’s pathetic humiliation, the more the audience roars with approval.  Having no idea if this social phenomena is happening in other theaters, to say one grows uncomfortable with this particular audience reaction is an understatement.  Is it human nature to pick on those weaker than yourself, or is it socially learned behavior?  One suspects the latter.     

Thankfully, real humor arrives in an extended scene without Keith in it, an odd little sequence that features Charles taking a senseless law school LSAT examination that he feels will lead to his employment as a waiter.  Another character arrives who is at least as ill-bred as he is, both specializing in the verbal put down, otherwise known as the technique of mind-fucking.  The scene develops slowly accentuating the absurdity of the situation, perfectly capturing the nuances of the characters who finally come to mean something, even if it’s only for laughs.  This little oasis of hilarity is short-lived, however, a sequence where words are lobbed at one another like guided missiles aiming for a direct hit hoping to disintegrate the other, where under the surface aggression is expressed through carefully observed dialogue that accomplishes nothing but futility.  From this pathetic intellectual void, Keith re-enters the picture only to sink further into his own psychological descent as his condition is realized through an endless journey into the night told with a Cassavetes-like edge captured by some brilliant 16 mm camerawork blown up to a grainy look from Sean Price Williams who follows him through darkened rooms, dead end corridors, and a maze of ever decreasing options, feeling more and more like a last-man-in-the-universe horror film.  The music and sound design are anything but subtle, perhaps too obvious in their attempts to express something close to those 50’s sci-fi films where the score reeks with psychotic brain fragmentation, dissonance, isolation, fear, horror, and dread.  Much of the finale is wordless with a dark, nightmarish overtone that is expressed with an assured cinematic flair, yet the overall feel left by this film is like getting pounded over the head by a hammer.  While it’s rare for cinema to feature a character as abjectly dysfunctional as this one, and the director deserves credit for that risk, yet it never becomes a compelling subject due to the insistent way it’s filmed, continuously mired in its own wretchedness (like wading through a minefield), as viewers are witness to an unending assault to the senses watching a single hapless individual openly exposed to a mercilessly brutal and indifferent humanity that can’t stop itself from feeling superior by taking out their frustrations on weaker individuals, resorting to bullying every chance they get, like a Pavlovian condition. 

Bestiaire

BESTIAIRE           B               

Canada  France  (72 mi)  2012  d:  Denis Côté

This film is no fiction, obviously. However, if it were a documentary, there would be a “subject.” Also, to describe it as an “essay” would entail a polemic or partisan implication, corresponding to the proper literary term. Cinema has come to label this genre of proposition as “object.” I don’t know how to label it myself, and even better, if this film is difficult to subsume but poetic at the same time. I started out with a naive desire to explore certain energies and to observe the relations or maybe even the failed encounters between humans and animals. In the end, this film is about contemplation — and something else. Something indefinable, something more obscure which I hope to find out more about with the help of the audience.

—Denis Côté from the film’s press kit (press-bestiaire)

Midway between Plattsburgh, Vermont and the city of Montreal in Canada, a distance of 60 miles, lies Parc Safari (home - Parc Safari), an animal and amusement park founded in 1972, featuring both an African and Asian species of elephant, but none of those details matter in this visual essay, a wordless and minimalist work that refuses to explain anything, but instead simply observes without judgment, accumulating detail over time.  Similar to Le Quattro Volte (The Four Times) (2010), the camera wordlessly gazes upon a world largely unfamiliar to us, where at least part of the distinguishing attempt here is not to embellish or beautify what we see, or even allow preconceived knowledge or understandings to interfere with the director’s mission, which is to observe human behavior through the unpretentious eyes of animals, and vice versa, both seemingly on equal footing.  A key factor in making the movie is to allow the mind to remain completely unpresumptuous throughout, where an unquestioned reality seeps through unfiltered, where neither species has an unfair advantage.  Like the Cahiers du Cinéma magazine writers who became filmmakers during the 60’s French New Wave, Côté is himself a former film critic from Montreal.  A champion of small and unconventional films, he redefines the viewing experience by infusing his films with a certain objective detachment.  Opening in the dark with the sounds of pencil on a sketch canvas, we quickly see a handful of art students *studying* something that stands before them, each scrutinizing the subject, gazing intently, before they return to the canvas.  What they’re eyeing is an artificially preserved deer, an example of the kind of wildlife you might see in national park visitor centers, mysteriously bringing the stuffed animal to life on canvas, where one would never know if the original subject the artist is rendering was real or imaginary, as it takes on new life in the eyes of the artist. 

Unlike groundbreaking directors like Tarkovsky or Bresson, Côté is not looking to transform the art of cinema, but seems content to stake out his claim for something imprecise or undefined, as the director has radically argued his experimental film is not a documentary.  Railing against the popular success of warmly humanized animal documentaries like WINGED MIGRATION (2001) or MARCH OF THE PENGUINS (2005), which create lovable subjects in the eyes of humans, turning animals into a form of human entertainment, much like soft, cuddly puppies, the director instead uses long-held, static camera shots gazing at animals as they often stand there gazing back at us.  Other times the camera may find animals simply staring out into empty space.  In each instance, no action is visibly happening onscreen to capture the attention of the viewer, but one grows curious about the surroundings, which are anything but natural.  In what must be approaching feeding time, a lion in a cage compulsively bangs against the locked door, like one of Pavlov’s dogs, as if demanding that the door be opened bringing food, where the sound is heard even after the camera shifts elsewhere, but the film instead offers no explanation other than the sight of a lone zoo employee standing nearby ignoring the commotion.  Initially the outdoor shots feature animals in the snow, like a small group of horses assembled together against a corrugated tin building, some only partially in the frame, moving about until there is only one staring directly at the camera, using no accompanying music, only natural sounds, as seen here:  Bestiaire (Dir. Denis Côté) Trailer - YouTube (1:29).  Only with the addition of more animals, like a small group of buffalo, does the audience realize this is a large scale zoo, mixing indoor and outdoor shots, mostly animals alone, many of them caged, where by spring, off in the distance with the grass suddenly turning green, a herd of elk may be seen running freely. 

After a fade to black, the camera is suddenly in the cramped studio quarters of a group of working taxidermists, with stuffed animals scattered about, also pieces of animals hanging on the wall, like antlers or horns.  One man is meticulously reconstructing a duck, which is a painstakingly slow process, where initially the animal isn’t even recognizable.  It’s an odd comment on animals, suggesting a bizarre afterlife, but ultimately it seems to say more about humans than animals, as they have a need to preserve life after death, even in an artificial form.  Obviously, in the more open outdoor space, thought is given to separate the caged predator cats and tigers from the zebras or impalas that roam free, but there’s no aesthetically designed space.  Most of this resembles the disorganized look of a working farm, with rutted tire tracks everywhere, random objects stacked in piles, where off in the distance touring cars are seen driving through the grounds with the arrival of summer.  With nothing resembling a carefully designed structure suitable for animal interaction, where they can move about hopping onto something resembling their natural habitat, instead we see a lone gorilla sitting on a dilapidated wooden structure, immobile, gazing at nothing until a couple with children walks into the frame, where the two have an animated discussion, even a kiss, where the viewing attention turns to them instead.  Just as quickly, the presence of people completely disappears during a rainstorm, but zebras still delight in seemingly having the entire outdoor grounds all to themselves.  There are no commercial shots of the concession stands or the children’s games, amusement rides, or the miniature golf, anything that reveals the mundane nature of the actual business operations.  Instead it’s a more isolated, free associative and contemplative film, observing a lone giraffe standing up against another corrugated tin structure, or a solitary elephant walking through the vast landscape, a stark contrast to the prevailing view of elephants living in the harmony of tight-knit family groups, unfathomably dwarfed by the emptiness of the wide open spaces, somehow questioning the meaning of it all, much like the existential dilemma facing mankind.