Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Southland Tales / USA / 2007

“Scientists are saying the future will be much more futuristic than originally predicted,” says Krysta Now, nee Krysta Kapowski, and her remark off-handedly describes Southland Tales’ peculiar anarchy. It occurs in 2008, three years after the first of several nukes christened the third World War. Yet in this miniscule cultural timeframe, the world has become remarkably askew: a collective entitled US-IDENT governs all civilian interactivity, from internet connections to bathroom stalls at airports; a porn star is apparently the most popular export in music, television, and soft drinks; and an entrepreneurial baron develops a means of harnessing the ocean for an alternate form of fuel, entitled “liquid karma.” There are other aspects to this vision of the future, even if they’re incidental: a policeman and his spiritual clone, an amnesiac savoir coincidentally the son of a California Senator, and a group of rollerblading terrorists. These aspects in and of themselves may not be particularly futuristic by Krista Now’s measure, and they don’t cohere in to a plot by even the most liberal standard. Rather, it all amounts to a dense, sporadically propulsive compulsion to tie one character to another by even the most lenient means.

Southland Tales is burdened by description, I think, because it wants to posit itself as a clever, if not prescient doomsday scenario. Instead, it sounds unavoidably like a circus of bizarre, sometimes sensational attractions, one that invites ridicule, awe, disdain, and laughter at regular intervals. It is, to its strength, a spectacle that should be seen and not described. As much as there is to behold here – and the cohesively ridiculous casting promises much to behold – Southland Tales is so concerned with spectacle, often excitedly, that its principle themes become incidental to an impetuous thrust to include more of the bizarre. It opens with the third World War, but the war herein supplies no concern for either resolution or harm. It’s merely the “bang” the world ends with, as stated by the narrator in his misquoting of T.S. Eliot.

This is a disappointment, because the film is established effectively with a prologue that announces the war, which is subsequently captured in an excited, propagandistic media – Southland Tales uses an onscreen interface that recalls both Children Men and, more clearly, Starship Troopers. Its dystopian future, however, is more aligned with that of Idiocracy than either of the other films—this interface is branded by Panasonic, Bud Light, and Hustler (the masthead for the latter even appears on a tank). This is a potent thought, that even in times of anarchy the media is intrusive, even manipulative.

In establishing himself as a filmmaker with identifiable aesthetics, Richard Kelly has failed retain two of Donnie Darko’s more assured traits. The score is ethereal and backgrounded, as opposed to Michael Andrew’s cherubic and urgent compositions for Kelly’s debut. It pauses intermittently to make room for a song, one from The Pixies, Elbow, or The Killers. These are all fine, I suppose (a number from the latter scores a rather extraordinary dance sequence), but it all lacks the mood of Echo and the Bunnymen or Joy Division or, for that matter, any band featured in Donnie Darko’s soundtrack.

Southland Tales is more parody than it is allegory. Dwayne Johnson’s nervous finger-twitching, seen repeatedly throughout the film, sort of epitomizes the film’s concern: he’s never really nervous, just playing nervous. The film’s concerns are just as superficial, and, by some measure, just as humorous.

Victoria’s review

by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Samuel Goldwyn Films 35mm print
09 Dec 2007 2:44 PM | Submit Comment