Leaving the theater after a viewing of Southland Tales, I had a mental image that seemed to sum up what I had seen and I offer it here for whatever it's worth. I was watching an old-fashioned Peter Max-inspired, Yellow Submarine-type animation: a wild-haired young man was walking down a city street straight toward the camera, and once he drew close to the fourth wall, he projectile-vomited all over the lens, a psychedelic spew of daisies and yuck and puppies and Che Guevara heads and toasters and farm animals and Aces of Spades and so forth that evolved in the way of a kaleidoscope, the images changing to suit every new pattern, the patterns dissolving into fractures of light and still more yuck ... and then this, too, dissolved and I saw one of the people who had been vomited on, a young woman, walking down the same city street, spattered with Lava lamp-colored puke, each spatter yielding its own odor (some quite fragrant, some not), each gradually fading until finally, two hours and twenty-four minutes later, a single stubborn stain remained on her coat sleeve and she paused at the entrance to a dry cleaners, sniffing the sleeve, as if debating whether or not to have the stain removed.
Southland Tales has been called Lynch-ian. I'm not too sure. Kelly proudly announces his influences (every now and again one floats bargelike down the Celluloid River, bearing a sign, Notable Influence Here!), and Lynch is definitely listed among them; yet Lynch has a touch of Andy Warhol in him. He likes to be coy with the audience, employing his “Ooh, I'm so sinister and mysterious” shtick, whereas in Southland Tales, Kelly takes more of the exuberant, pissed-off, demented Jackson Pollock approach to narrative architecture or the lack thereof. While Lynch's films are mannered and arrogantly try to persuade us that he knows what he's about, even if we can't understand it, the impression left by Southland Tales is that Kelly simply couldn't fit all his architecture in, or else he couldn't wrap his head around such a totally awesome concept as the end of the world without running a little amok, and he's sorry, really he is, and he wants to explain everything and will gladly sell you some graphic novels to help clarify matters (Chapters 1, 2, and 3 of the story are for sale in that form; the movie consists of Chapters 4, 5, and 6).
Since debuting the film at Cannes, where it was vilified by critics, booed by a portion of the audience, and its entrails displayed on a pike before a picture of the Lion King in catacombs beneath Paris, where the house of Navarre still reigns, Kelly has gone back in and redone the voiceover (a necessary evil, in this instance), added special effects and a prologue to flesh out the backstory, and trimmed about twenty minutes, losing several subplots and a character or two in the process; but there are too many characters to name, in any case, and subplots still dangle from the movie like (to overwork a metaphor) the roots of an aquatic plant torn loose from its mooring and set adrift on a stormy sea, rendered ungainly and on the verge of being capsized by these loose ends.
It opens with camcorder footage taken at a Texan Fourth of July shindig back in 2005, showing a mushroom cloud blooming above the town of Abilene; terrorists subsequently destroy El Paso, thereby initiating WWIII, a conflict fought on fronts in North Korea, Syria, Iraq, etc., and our country is buttoned down tight. Homeland Security has morphed into an agency called USIDent, which spies on the citizenry and controls the Internet. Interstate travel has been virtually banned. Some Venice Beach-based Marxist revolutionaries led by Zora Carmichaels (Cheri Oteri, one of four or five ex-SNL vets in the cast), a group constituted chiefly of slam poets, actors, and filmmakers, are attempting to overthrow the government. We're swiftly running out of oil, but help is on the way in the person of Baron Von Westphalen (played by a shrilly annoying Wallace Shawn), an eccentric German scientist who has developed an alternative power source, Fluid Karma, that utilizes the motion of ocean waves—FK also serves as an hallucinogenic drug that was tested on (among other soldiers) Pilot Abiline (Justin Timberlake), a scarred Iraqi vet who hangs around Venice Beach and provides the film with a sardonic narration, laced with quotes from the Book of Revelation. That takes care of the prologue.
The plot ... well, there's a lot of it, most taking place in L.A. over the July Fourth weekend of 2008, just prior to an important presidential primary. Here are the basics. Action superstar Boxer Santaros (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) has been kidnapped and stricken with amnesia during a trip into the desert and has forgotten about his marriage to Madeline Frost (Mandy Moore), the daughter of Senator Bobby Frost and his wife Nana Mae (Miranda Richardson) who dresses like a dowager Vulcan and runs USIDent and hopes to Lady-Macbeth her way to the White House à la Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate. Since his return from the desert, Boxer has hooked up with Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a simple-minded, new Age-y porn star and the host of a View-like TV show for porn actresses who give good talk, with whom he has co-written an apocalyptic screenplay called The Power that has some eerie similarities to what is secretly happening in the world.
Boxer, as it turns out, is being manipulated by two allied conspiracies, the first engineered by a pornographer (Nora Dunn) who is using sex videos she made with Boxer to blackmail Senator Frost into influencing a vote that will drastically curtail the powers of USIDent. Meanwhile, the Venice Beach Marxists have a plan to foment a violent revolt against the government. They have kidnapped a cop, Roland Taverner (Seann William Scott) and replaced him with his twin, Ronald Taverner (also Scott), a disturbed war vet whose reflection doesn't appear to be acting in concert with his body. The intent is for Ronald to take Boxer on a drive-along (research for his next film role) and involve him in a racist murder; but before they can achieve their ends, a real racist cop (Jon Lovitz, who manages to out-annoy Wallace Shawn) commits a real racist murder. And before the streets of L.A. erupt in violent rebellion, before a mega-zeppelin carries most of the principals off to their respective destinies, before a flying ice cream truck—the mobile salesroom of weapons dealer Walter Mung (Christopher Lambert)—unites with a power station that may be causing a rift in the fourth dimension, there's much, much more, including a baby whose impending bowel movement may prove to be a thermonuclear trigger (an obvious reference to Gravity's Rainbow).
There were a great many things I liked about Southland Tales. Dwayne Johnson impressed me—he just might have the chops to be a more-than-decent actor if he quits working in cute-kid movies. Sara Michelle Gellar's performance reminded me of why I dug her in Buffy. I liked Ling Bai as Von Westphalen's dragon lady and Amy Poehler as Dream, a Neo-Marxist slam poet. I liked a hilariously obscene automobile commercial, some of the freaky newscasts, and a number of fragments and scenes that are probably going to wind up as hits on YouTube, which may be the best way to see the movie. I liked the musical numbers: Krysta Now's single “Teen Horniness Is Not a Crime"; Rebekah Del Rio's rendition of the National Anthem, doing for Kelly's film what she did for David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, when she dropped in to belt out Roy Orbison's “Crying"; and I like Timberlake lip-synching to the Killers's “All the Things that I've Done,” while nurses wearing blond wigs recline atop pinball machines behind him ... though I haven't the foggiest why this scene was included in the movie.
So much of Southland Tales falls flat, however, it's impossible to embrace the film fully. From moment to moment, the film plays like a farce, a doomsday noir, a paranoid fantasy, an SNL sketch, and at times I had the idea that I was listening to a meth-head ramble on about his favorite conspiracy theories, lapsing now and again into unintelligible babble, perking up and almost making sense for a minute or two. Yet I've rarely been so conflicted about a movie, so unwilling to go thumbs up or thumbs down. It may be I sympathize with Kelly, having written an incoherent second novel myself, or it may be that there are so many lame, by-the-numbers left-wing movies out there (Lions for Lambs and Rendition, for example), I appreciate the fact that he took a chance and went for it, that his ambition exceeded his grasp, and I'm curious to see whether the excised twenty minutes add to or detract from the film, and I want to see this version again, on the off-chance that I've misjudged it terri
bly. Until then, I join the rest of the world in their conviction that Kelly should be excoriated, given prizes, pilloried, praised, beaten by chimps, encouraged in his madness, charged with crimes against the Aesthetic, awarded the Accolade, shunned, taken to our collective bosom, scathingly renounced, treated to grapes and honey by beautiful maidens, ordered to commit seppuku....
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The Fountain of Neptune by Kate Wilhelm
Kate Wilhelm's most recent books include the novels The Unbidden Truth and Sleight of Hand and a short book for writers and readers called Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop.
Here she presents us with the story of a young woman whose life changes abruptly.
She did most things right, got a second opinion, did not panic, did not go on a drinking binge, or search for a third opinion. What she failed to do was take a friend with her or tape record the conversations with both brain surgeons. Consequently, her memory of what one or the other said proved to be sketchy, but key phrases were ineradicable. Inoperable. A baseline CAT scan. More blurred vision likely, more frequently. Possible double vision. Possible distorted images, illusions. Possible hallucination. Probable headaches.
"Live your life normally,” one or the other said. “I'd like to see you again in three months."
"Why?"
"With another CAT scan we can better predict what to expect."
Her question had covered both parts, live a normal life, as well as a return appointment. A normal life meant working every day for a corporation that cared as little about her as she cared about it. She remained in her apartment for several days, spending time weeping, then she added up her assets, including the sale of her car, cashing in her retirement plan, selling most of her possessions. She bought a laptop computer, a beginner's Italian language CD, and a new digital camera. And she made a reservation for a flight to Rome. At the last minute she made it first class.
She had been to Rome once for a three-day conference and one day of sightseeing. At the near demand of a tour guide, she and everyone else in the group had dutifully tossed a coin into Trevi Fountain. “Rome will call you back,” the young guide had said.
She did not tell her mother, who would berate her for leaving a job with health benefits at a time like this. Nor did she tell her sister, who would scream and wail and insist that she come live with her and her family of four noisy children under the age of twelve and a husband who worked when it was convenient. She told them both that she was being transferred to the Rome office. She did not burden her few good friends who would grieve helplessly, or her ex, who would not. And she did not tell anyone in the office. She knew it would be on her insurance record, and she never would be insurable again.
She was forty-two years old and more than likely she would be dead within six months. So she flew to Rome first class.
She had found an apartment on the Internet, and chose it because it had Internet access, sparing her the search for a cyber café. Her landlord thought she was a writer, and in a sense she was. She had spent more than a decade writing meticulous reports for an R&D department, and now she began keeping a record of the progression of her inoperable tumor. At first there was no particular reason, but after she missed her appointment scheduled for early May, she decided to send the medical record to the brain surgeons.
The blurred vision came more often, sometimes embarrassingly in public, more often when she was in her apartment.
She spent one week in Florence, awestruck by David and the Pietà, overwhelmed by the Tivoli gardens, and the Uffizi museum, but her call had issued from Rome and she was not tempted to leave again. There were days in the Vatican museum; operas in a gothic church; days wandering around the Colosseum, populating the arena with gladiators, the forum with politicians; a special exhibition of Leonardo's work reproduced full size; a close-up view of the Last Supper....
She was in love with Rome, with the streets strewn with litter that came alive in any breeze, with the gelatos and pizza slices topped with anything edible, the espresso, all the food. And most of all she was in love with the magic of its sunlight, the complexity of Rome's agelessness, where contemporary glass and steel structures stood side by side with those from a past of almost inconceivable antiquity—a monument here, a stele there, remnants of a temple, a statue, the juxtaposition of an ephemeral flicker in time and the mute eloquent endurance of millennia.
In the evenings she studied Italian, wrote her daily report, and downloaded her pictures onto her computer, deleted many, manipulated others, enhanced some, and put the saved images on a CD, to be sent to her sister eventually.
That evening, the last day of May, she gazed at her latest pictures of Neptune's Fountain in Piazza Navona. It was her favorite so far and she had visited it several times. Neptune doing battle with an octopus and nymphs mounted on horses rising from the fountain basin. Neptune was as muscular as a body builder. All the male statues were, and the females were all lissome, willowy, with not a muscle or bone in sight. The steeds looked wild and beautiful. But something was wrong.
She looked for previous pictures she had taken of the fountain, then printed the versions to compare them, find the cause for her unease. It came as a mild surprise to see that she had been to that one fountain four different times. The pictures were dated, and the first one had been taken April eleventh, one in early May, one mid-May, and the most recent on the last day of May.
After putting them in chronological order to examine them, she gasped, and stood up so quickly, so urgently that she knocked her chair over. Steadying herself with a hand on the table, she closed her eyes hard, rubbed them, and without looking again at the pictures yet, she backed away from the table, and only then opened her eyes and crossed the few feet to her tiny kitchen for a glass of water.
All the pictures were different. “It's started,” she said under her breath.
Distorted images, one of the doctors had said. Illusions.
She had entered the next phase, she thought dully, and forced herself to return to the table, to study the set of pictures, seeking to learn when the new phase had started without her noticing.
Some of the views were from different places around the fountain, single shots, but the four she singled out had all been taken from the same location. She had been seated on the same bench for each of the four. The changes were subtle, but unmistakable. They presented a sequence in time. First the nymph's head was turned away slightly, her hair streaming behind her; the horse's head was lowered, and towering over them Neptune was straining in a struggle with the octopus that had one arm wrapped around the god's leg. Next the nymph's head was turned more to the front, and the horse had lifted its head. The octopus was lower down on Neptune's leg.
They were not illusions, she realized, but full-blown hallucinations. She was telling herself a story and providing graphic images to illustrate it. In the last picture the nymph had finished turning her head, and was smiling up at Neptune, and he was done with his mock battle, and now was looking down on the nymph, his hand extended toward her. Even the horse was looking at him in that picture.
Slowly, moving with care, she gathered all the printouts and slipped them into an envelope. Hallucinations, the final phase?
A church bell tolled the hour of eight, her daily signal to leave the apartment, drop in at a newsstand to buy a newspaper, go to dinner at a neighborhood tratoria. She stifled a giggle as she wondered if she would hear Pan's pipes, see his mad dance.
She walked the block to the newsstand, purchased her newspaper, and on impulse asked for a picture of the Fontana di Netunno en Piazza Navona. The shopkeeper smiled at her Italian baby talk and answered in English, as he always did.
"Neptune's Fountain, poster size? Postage?"
She didn't know how to say about eight by ten, and held up her hands to indicate the size.
He found one in a stack of glossy prints and as she counted out money, he said, “Yo
u should visit it at dawn, the first light of the sun. Some say that's the time of magic."
"Grazie,” she said and he answered that she was welcome.
That night she was not surprised when the glossy professional print proved to be unlike any of her own. Again, not glaring differences, but significant, meaningful.
That night she also recalled another of the phrases one or the other doctor had used: need a companion. Of course, she thought, she couldn't be left alone acting out a hallucinatory experience. She could harm herself or, worse, harm others. A companion. Institution? It was just as well she had put it out of mind for four months. She marveled at how her mind was protecting her from remembering too much.
There were things she had to do: address the envelope to her sister, write her a letter, include a copy of her will, details about her bank account, some passwords, name and address of her attorney who had drawn up the will. Edit the ongoing report of her situation for the doctors, make two printouts, address those envelopes.
And she had to arrive at the Fountain of Neptune at dawn to see the magic of the first rays of light. That had to wait until after she had taken care of more mundane things.
* * * *
The days were becoming quite warm, even hot, but the predawn twilight was pleasantly cool, and there was a slight mist in the air. She was disappointed to see another person at the fountain that early morning, a man seated on the bench she had come to regard as her own. He rose and moved to a different bench as she approached. They were the only two people in sight at that hour.
FSF, April 2008 Page 14