DVD SCANS
Now here's a fine mess you'll want to get into
Posted on Fri, Mar. 28, 2008
BY RENE RODRIGUEZ
Southland Tales, director Richard Kelly's follow-up to his acclaimed debut Donnie Darko, premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, where it was widely derided, and then sneaked into theaters last November in a much shorter and reportedly easier-to-understand cut. It quickly vanished after a few weeks.
The movie never made it to South Florida at all, which turns out to have been a blessing. One of the advantages of watching Southland Tales on DVD (Sony, $25) is that you can hit the rewind button whenever something flits by that you didn't quite understand. Trust me when I say this will happen. A lot.
It took me about an hour, for example, to get through the film's opening 30 minutes, which consist almost entirely of exposition. Kelly obviously designed Southland Tales for repeat viewings -- there is so much crammed into the movie, it's probably impossible anyone but the director will ever understand it all -- which helps explain why it was rejected en masse when it was released last year, but is destined to gradually find its audience on home video.
The movie, which defies simple description -- it defies everything, really -- is a mélange of satire, sci-fi, sociopolitical commentary and end-of-the-world apocalyptic speculation. It is also, on occasion, a musical, including a lip-synced number by Justin Timberlake, who performs while wearing a blood-soaked T-shirt and pouring Budweiser beer over himself. The film also comprises the final three chapters in a six-volume story, the first three of which are available as a graphic novel at a bookstore near you. Take that as a warning about the delirious ride you're in for.
The large cast includes Dwayne ''The Rock'' Johnson as an amnesiac action-film star with marital ties to a political family (one guess who his character is patterned after), Sarah Michelle Gellar as a porn star aspiring to build her own entertainment empire (complete with energy drink), Seann William Scott as twin brothers on battling sides of the political spectrum, and a slew of Saturday Night Live cast members and veterans in smaller roles (including Amy Poehler, Nora Dunn, Cheri Oteri and Jon Lovitz as a scary fascist cop -- no, really).
Any movie as incomprehensible as Southland Tales cannot be deemed a success. But even if Kelly's reach exceeds his grasp, there's something exhilarating about a film as drunk on possibilities and as fearless about structure and character as this one. Kelly is commenting on everything from the Iraq War to celebrity worship to post 9/11-paranoia here, and while the ideas tend to crash into each other instead of flowing smoothly, every frame of this cracked, lunatic fantasia exerts an irresistible pull.
The DVD presents the film in a razor-sharp widescreen transfer and includes a 30-minute making-of featurette that reveals, among other things, the earnestness with which Kelly made the film. Southland Tales is a mess, but it makes more ''logical'' movies seem boring and stale in comparison. I can't wait to watch it again -- and again.
`THE ICE STORM'
In an essay included in the liner notes of the two-disc set of The Ice Storm (Criterion Collection, $40), critic Bill Krohn proclaims the movie as the best American film of the '90s. I don't know if I'd go that far, but it's certainly in the top 10 of the decade. Ang Lee's adaptation of Rick Moody's novel, about the tragic consequences of the counterculture revolution of the 1960s' arrival into the American suburbs in 1973, is a subtle and sublime masterpiece that feels even more timely today than it did upon its release 10 years ago.
The DVD, which beautifully preserves the film's dingy cinematography, is another typically classy package from Criterion, including a commentary track by Lee and producer James Schamus (who agree, without a trace of irony, that the film still holds up pretty well), a collection of retrospective interviews with Moody and the film's cast (Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Joan Allen and Elijah Wood), four deleted scenes and several featurettes about the movie's distinct art design and cinematography.
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