Southland Tales

“This is the way the world ends… this is the way the world ends… this is the way the worl-” Okay! Okay! For fuck’s sake, I got it already!!!”

H-Bomb: Richard Kelly’s scatter shot, schizophrenic apocalyptic tale has so many characters, themes, ideas, plots, twists, subplots, sub-subplots, and sub-sub-subplots that it weaves itself into a web of almost complete senselessness, nearly beating the viewer into intellectual submission. However, it does make for an inexplicably interesting watch…

Right now director Richard Kelly is at a crossroads in his career. He came onto the scene in 2001 with the cult hit “Donnie Darko”, and while the film flopped in theaters, it gained a very large and fervent following on DVD. With its mix of surrealism, mystery, and teen angst, it had a David Lynch-lite feel to it that captured the hearts and minds of fanboys everywhere and spurred endless debates on Internet forums as to the film’s meaning.

[Incidentally, if you are a Lynch fan, check out his artwork here]

Five years later, writer/director Kelly followed up on his promising debut with “Southland Tales”, an uber-ambitious, epic scale, end of the world satire set in a futuristic, dystopian Los Angeles. It originally ran over three hours long and had enough characters and story threads for ten films. Once intended as a multi-media story, it was preceded by three graphic novels chronicling the events leading up to it.

Sadly, Richard Kelly watched what he had hoped would be his magnum opus unravel before his eyes when it premiered at Cannes in 2006. Well, it landed on The Croisette like a lead balloon, and the critical and audience reaction was hostile, to put it mildly… “I’d rather saw my own nuts off than watch this fucking movie again!”, one critic so delicately articulated. It was lambasted for being ridiculously self-indulgent and almost completely incoherent, and was, in no uncertain terms, branded a complete misfire. It was all downhill for “Southland Tales” from there; it sat on the shelf for over a year while the studio and Kelly desperately tried to figure out how to salvage it, it was cut down to two hours and twenty minutes, and then it was released quietly into a few theaters in early 2008, died a quick death at the box office, and then was released quietly on DVD. And there it has loitered, until I dusted off my copy and gave it another viewing.

So, what do I mean when I say Kally’s career is at a crossroads? His first film found an audience, his second film was a notorious flop, and his third one, the Cameron Diaz thriller “The Box”, is coming out later this Fall, and I think Kelly’s future as a filmmaker hinges on its success or failure (not to sound fatalistic, but…). Since his make-or-break film is just weeks away, I felt oddly compelled to give Kelly’s much maligned sophomore feature another look. So I popped it in my player last night, and… here’s what I think…

“Southland Tales” has been described as being a love-it-or-hate-it affair, with a (very) few people loving it and practically everyone else hating it. I am one of the few who falls in between. While I certainly don’t think it’s any kind of misunderstood masterpiece, and I absolutely get why it’s so strongly disliked by so many, and agree with many of their complaints, I do find it fascinating and quite watchable, with a number of great scenes and moments, that while they don’t add up to a great film, they do add up to a very curious one.

Just to be straight, there is so much shit going on in “Southland Tales” that writing an encompassing synopsis for say… a review, is next to impossible, but I’ll give it a shot. In 2005, the U.S. suffers another catastrophic terrorist attack, a nuclear bomb goes off in Texas. This leads to the Republican Party winning an overwhelming majority in the Congress (when we’re told this bit of information, the screen shows two elephants fucking… real subtle, Mr. Kelly), which in turn leads to a vast expansion of the powers of Homeland Security called USIdent. USIdent has been given free reign to monitor practically every aspect of civilian life; they control the Internet, they require visas and checkpoints for interstate travel, they have soldiers set up on gun turrets on practically every block… they even have security cameras in public toilets (!). Of course, this gives rise to an underground group of rebels known as the Neo-Marxists, a ragtag bunch composed mainly of SNL stars (Cheri Oteri, Jon Lovitz, and Amy Poehler are among them) determined to bring this “Orwellian Nightmare” of a government agency down.

Cut to 2008 Los Angeles, movie star Boxer Santeros (The Rock) wakes up on a beach with his memory erased. He’s been missing for several days and USIdent is driving themselves nuts trying to find him, because he’s the son-in-law of the Republican Vice Presidential Candidate, who in turn is one of the founders of USIdent.

Meanwhile, Boxer has apparently been shagging Porn Star/Entrepreneur Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Geller) and has written a screenplay about the end of the world with her.

Meanwhile, the Neo-Marxists have kidnapped L.A. Cop Roland Tavener (Sean William Scott) and have recruited his twin brother Ronald to impersonate him in order to set Boxer up in a compromising situation that would cost the Republicans the election. Still with me? No? Good.

Meanwhile, the U.S., in addition to being at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, is now also at war in Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Since we’re at war with virtually the entire Middle East, oil has become hard to come by, and we’re more desperate than ever to find an alternative fuel source.

Meanwhile, said alternative fuel source has been discovered by a group of weirdo scientists (Wallace Shawn, Bai Ling, and that creepy lady from “Poltergeist”) in the form of Liquid Karma, an energy harnessed from the Ocean.

Meanwhile (again), these same weirdo scientists have also been conducting strange experiments in the desert that involved Boxer, and seem to have insights into his situation and the screenplay he has written that even he isn’t aware of. Meanwhile… (H-Man stops for breath)… we have Justin Timberlake as a scarred Iraq War veteran who seems to have unlimited insight into everything as he is the all seeing narrator of these proceedings. All this, people, is only the tip of the iceberg… literally…

Like I said, A LOT of shit is going on in this movie… too much shit, as a matter of fact. It’s the reason why it fails… but it’s also the reason why I kind of enjoy it. The film’s detractors are absolutely right when they say it’s often incoherent, it often is. Hell, twenty minutes into the movie and Justin Timberlake’s opening narration is still going on, still introducing characters and plot threads, and the more it piles on, the less sense it all makes.

While I admire Kelly’s ambition, as a writer, he definitely bit off way more than he could chew with this bloated narrative he cooked up. He wrote the sort of script screenwriting professors warn their students not to write, the kind that keeps adding and adding until all logic and cohesion are lost. He has characters working for each other while working against each other, working as double agents, triple agents, constantly backstabbing and fucking each other over and switching sides… to the point where it’s impossible to tell who’s doing what to whom and whose side is anyone on. Example, near the end, Geller’s Porn Star character steals something of value from one Neo-Marxist, only to supply it to another Neo-Marxist!

At the end, it’s impossible to tell if the shady scientists are working for the Government, the Neo-Marxists, or some unknown third interest. And don’t even get me started on the whole time travel/fourth dimension subplot (like I said, kids, tip of the iceberg…). The whole thing reminded me a little of “Watchmen” in an indirect way. Both films have huge, convoluted stories, but with “Watchmen” I felt like writer Alan Moore and director Zack Snyder knew at all times exactly where they were going with their labyrinthine plot, whereas with Kelly and “Southland Tales”, I get the feeling that he set up this huge story… and then just decided to wing it.

Yep, this flick goes over and backwards on itself so many times it simultaneously implodes and explodes, leaving the viewer’s brain twisted into a pretzel. At the end nothing makes much sense. Not to mention the dialogue spewed out by the many characters is so often self-conscious and pretentious, filled with half-assed philosophical horseshit and quoting randomly from poetry and the Bible (Book of Revelations, specifically). Also, if this is supposed to be a futuristic tale of the end of the world, why in the hell did Kelly set it in 2008? The film was shot in 2005, first screened in 2006, finally came out in 2008, and now, here in 2009, the movie is officially dated… whatever.

Anyway, despite its descent into utter chaos, I did like a lot of what I saw. There are a number of individual scenes that, on their own, work very well. Like the scene where Boxer, Ronald, and officer Bart Bookman (a creepy Jon Lovitz) respond to a domestic disturbance call. Or the scene where Cheri Oteri tries to pay a black market arms dealer (Christopher Lambert) with a personal check. (“No I can’t take a fucking check! Get the fuck outta my ice cream truck you Cro-Magnon bitch!!!”) Or the CGI animated Liquid Karma commercial that shows two SUVs fucking (“It’s the European version”). Or my personal favorite, Justin Timberlake’s musical number where he lip synchs to The Killers. It comes out of nowhere and means nothing, but by that point of the film, I was ready to toss up my hands, yell “Fuck it”, and just accept whatever the movie sent my way.

Basically, when you cut through all the weirdness, you find that “Southland Tales” is an allegory about the Second Coming of Christ (not spoiling anything, the film more or less reveals this pretty early on). It’s an apocalyptic tale with a shit ton of strange window dressing added on. I have no idea who exactly Richard Kelly made this movie for, who it was supposed to appeal to. Adventurous filmgoers would be a good guess, except even they seemed to be largely put off by this display of cinematic masturbation. I admit, this movie is a train wreck, but it’s a train wreck that I found as enjoyable as I did frustrating.

If I were to recommend this truly bizarre movie to anyone, I would do so cautiously, and warn that person that they most likely won’t like it at all. But still, despite its many imperfections, I admire Kelly and his creation. I truly believe, as a filmmaker, he is full of a lot of unique and interesting ideas, and could make some really terrific films. He just needs to learn how to harness these ideas, articulate them in a less jumbled and esoteric way, and not try to stuff so much into one package. Hopefully, with “The Box”, he will find his way.