Running Commentary: SOUTHLAND TALES *part 1

by: bamf 10 months, 2 weeks, 6 days, 13 hours, 56 minutes ago 21

Bamf here rematerializing from the void..

-Alexander Pope,
An Essay on Man, Epistle I, 1733

Picture this, Baz Luhrmann, Terry Gilliam, Phillip K. Dick, Frank Hebert and James Cameron are playing Texas hold-em in a dark, musky room.  Luhrmann calls “all in” at the turn working a solid royal flush draw, all at the table fold save for Dick. Who has a pair of threes.  The dealer taps the green raised felt, the eyes fall on the table as all hold their breath…waiting.  Another 3 falls, Dick makes a set, and then out of the black of the cards a black hole forms from the absurdity and pulls the players into a mutated mess of legs and arms, the screams are horrible as this mass pulls and twists the bodies together, and at once it stops.  Silence fills the air, the deafening kind of silence that makes your brain think of a ring to hold its own synapses together.  Something moves in the dark, a man rises, what could come out of such a mess?  Out of this quorum of dreamers, visionaries, and futurists comes Richard Kelly, and he has an idea for a story called Southland Tales.

We that write about film will be troubled by trying to put this film in a box.  I want to say this is Dune meets Strange Days but that is somewhat misleading.  The story is played out like a full motion graphic novel.  At its heart I see a film that is Richard Kelly’s love letter to Los Angeles.  He uses strong comedic characters to weave a hopeful tale about the end of the world.  I use the word hope in the context that our friend Alexander Pope did in the stanza given at the beginning of this bit.  The future is never present, and the past never seems real, but one certainty we find in this life is death.  What does death bring us but heaven, well at least some of us if you play by the rules, or even believe in that sort of hopeful thinking.  I find Kelly tackling this notion of hope in Southland Tales albeit ambiguously. 

Southland Tales will take a few viewings before you are able to fully take in the whole of the story not because it is done poorly, but because it is done so well.  The first time you see it, you can be overwhelmed by the information, and as you adjust to the world you find it easier to concentrate on the shine of it all.  The performances come from actors you may not even recognize.  I was able to spot almost everyone except Jenine Garofalo and Tim Roth. The only people who are as you know them would be, Sean William Scott (who is great) Sarah Michelle Gellar and “The Rock” Dwayne Johnson.  Johnson is as magnetic as ever, with a twitch, and Gellar says more dirty things then she ever did in Cruel Intentions(hell I even liked Mandy Moore).  This movie is right in my wheel house.  It’s science fiction matched with the world we see today.  I was duped to my surprise into actually liking a Moby soundtrack, which is brilliant.

If I had a wish I would want you to see this without knowing a thing about it, so I leave this intentionally vague.  I need a few viewings myself to really dig into the meat of it all, but for those who do not like it in the end I will challenge them by asking why they are still thinking about it days after?  If only High School students had the attention span to make this a blockbuster hit.  There is much to chew on in Southland Tales—porn, commercialism, drugs, politics, war, peace, god and Justin Timberlake.  It’s all there with a main stream sheen and a counter culture glare.  Look for another more in depth review after I see this a few more times which will be soon.  I nearly walked back to the ticket counter that moment and bought another round.  It’s not the best film of the year, but it is my favorite.  Love this one.

List of cities and showtimes here

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