An odd little artifact of the Ashcroft Age, blending neo-luddite Super8 and insidiously crisp video effects, with a gallery of amateur actors lip-synching to Neil Young. The film is peppered with many of Young’s preoccupations. Environmentalism is the most obvious of these (and, by the end of the film, the least interesting), but there’s also the emphasis on characters who tried to their best but they could not, or to put it another way, keep fuckin’ up.
The setting is a rural California enclave of the kind that Young has been waxing solipsistic about for decades. But the great surprise is that the music is almost all excellent (with the regrettable exception of the finale). I think I’ll go illegally download some of it right now!
One more thing: the young environmentalist protagonist’s name is Sun Green, which is also the name of the girl in the flower shop in Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Shakey Pictures DVD Screener
10 Mar 2006 12:11 PM | Submit Comment