December 23: Southland Tales

Salon has recently launched a Film Salon section and currently various people are contributing a list of movies they are calling "films of the decade". So imagine my surprise and pleasure when Thomas Rogers listed Richard Kelly's maligned Southland Tales as his choice. I'd watched the film on DVD shortly after its release and rather enjoyed it but because so many people had been so negative about it -- and by this time I wasn't regularly posting my reviews (even though I drafted versions to post) -- I sort of let it slide. So many times in the past, I've been an audience of one. So it was with some interest and a bit of a relief to learn that I'm not the only one who thought the film had merit.

There a great deal of ambition in Kelly's vision and from what I recall reading, he faced some financing problems so he wasn't able to fully realize his vision on screen. There's a graphic novel that covers three chapters that are basically the set up for the film which comprise the final three chapters. Even without having read the novel, I could appreciate that he was aiming for something -- which so many filmmakers today don't or can't because of budgets, studio interference, whatever.

Southland Tales is set in an alternate world Southern California on July 4, 2008. When the film opens, America had engaged in World War III and the result was the break up of the United States into zones, all overseen by US-IDENT, a Big Brother government agency with cameras everywhere and all the power created by the Patriot Act. Los Angeles -- part of the titular Southland -- is a mess and home to a series of very curious characters ranging from a movie star with amnesia named Boxer Santaros (Dwayne Johnson) whom several people are searching for, a former porn actress turned singer (Sarah Michelle Gellar) who has ties to Boxer, a policeman (Seann William Scott) with a secret, to a group of underground rebels (Amy Poehler, Nora Dunn, Cheri Oteri).

The cast is large and rangy (I haven't even mentioned Justin Timberlake, Miranda Richardson, John Larroquette, Bai Ling, Wallace Shawn, Beth Grant, Zelda Rubinstein, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jon Lovitz, Christopher Lambert, all of whom add something special to this ragout) and the plot is a mix of science fiction, spy drama, low comedy and action movie rolled together.

I've watched the film several times again recently when it was playing on cable and each time I think I gained more of an insight into Kelly's vision. This is certainly not an easy film and I can see how some critics might dismiss it outright without giving it a chance. The right wing types are the villains, but the left doesn't get off easily either. It's sprawling, ambitious and almost visionary. One has to open up and just go with the flow -- but there's so much to admire and appreciate from Dwayne Johnson's pitch-perfect comedy to Seann William Scott's heroism to the oddball cameos. Kelly's influences range far and wide and that seems to be what some find most objectionable -- that he takes from David Lynch and Ridley Scott and Kathryn Bigelow and on and on. But what they apparently can't see is that Kelly HAS a vision. It's refreshing to see a film that challenges you -- that forces you to use your mind and to pay attention to the details. There's an intelligence at work behind the camera that I certainly appreciated.

I was a fan of Donnie Darko, Kelly's first feature, when it was released and I actually thought the director's cut brought elevated that film to a close to being a masterpiece. Southland Tales did not succumb to the sophomore slump as I saw it. No, if anything it tried to do too much -- but I would rather see a noble failure than a pallid cookie-cutter feature film.

Rating:            B+