Southland Tales. (15.)
Directed by Richard Kelly.
Starring Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore, Cheri Oteri, Wallace Shawn, Lou Taylor Pucci, Amy Poehler, Nora Dunn, Bai Ling, Holmes Osbourne, Miranda Richardson, Jon Lovitz, John Larroquette and Justin Timberlake. Out on limited edition Blu-ray from Arrow Video from January 25th. 145/ 160 mins.
This is my third time reviewing Southland Tales, Kelly's still notorious second film, and at least the fourth time seeing it. The first time was for its small scale UK cinema release in 2007, move than a year after it had been booed at Canz, a very great honour it shares with the likes of La Grand Bouffe, Crash, Post Tenebras Lux and Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me. In 2021, even though I covered it last summer for a release on MUBI, when I saw Arrow was releasing a limited two-disc edition I was straight on to the PRs for a preview disc.
The inference is Southland Tales is a misunderstood classic that has grown over time, but it really hasn't. Back in 2007 when I reviewed it for the paper I gave it three stars and if I extended the star giving business to this site I doubt I'd give it any more than that today. The salient point is I'm still watching it and doing so with enthusiasm, more than for many of the films I've awarded five stars to.
So, before progressing with the disc, here's the review. If you already read this jump the next seven paragraphs.
------------------------------
As self-indulgent, megalomaniac, follow-ups to a classic debut feature go, Richard Kelly's Southland Tales is the most extreme example since Dennis Hopper followed Easy Rider with The Last Movie. It's part old testament, part Rocky Horror, part MTV Spring Break, part Fahrenheit 9/11, part bad David Lynch, at least three parts a rehash Katherine Bigelow's pre-millennial LA thriller Strange Days and a cheeky smidgen of the ending of Repo Man. But most of all, it's exactly no part Donnie Darko.
After the slow-burning success of his elegantly controlled debut movie about suburban time travel and alternative universes, writer/director Kelly (still barely in his thirties) threw all his toys into the pram with this sprawling, undisciplined sci-fi/ satire about the world ending in Los Angeles. Other than being very weird, it's as different from Donnie Darko as is possible to imagine.
The tone oscillates wildly: comedy, music videos, biblical prophesy and shoot outs all come tumbling haphazardly onto the screen. The feeling of random chaos is accentuated by Kelly populating his film with a ragtag band of former teen stars, pop singers, TV icons and any number of Saturday Night Live performers. When Christophe Lambert shows up it feels like this is less a cast, more a thespian equivalent of Bring Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses.
At the heart of it is Dwayne Johnson, dropping his wrestling moniker The Rock for the first time, who is absolutely ridiculous as a kind of Schwarzenegger figure; the action star who's married into a major political family. With his eerie frozen face and panic-filled eyes, he looks like Kryton from Red Dwarf but it's probably not a bad performance – it may be he's playing exactly the character as written.
The film is packed full of ideas, only a few of which are any good. Set around the 2008 Presidential election it lumbers itself with lots of political satire reflecting the civil liberties concerns around the Patriot Act and War on Terror. Even back then American politics was operating at a level of insanity that it looked on satire as a double dare ya. More interesting perhaps are the sci-fi strands involving perpetual motion machines and rips in the fabric of the fourth dimension but there always seems to be so much clutter in the film to fully explore anything satisfactorily.
The movie jumps in at Chapter IV (supposedly there are a set of graphic novels that flesh out the back story more fully) and right from the off it is clear that not only is there a hell of a lot going on here, but that Kelly has little or no idea on how to communicate it to an audience. So instead we have Justin Timberlake as his mop-up man, popping up to provide narration explanations of what the images have failed to communicate. Actually, it's nowhere near as incomprehensible as its reputation. The story can be followed easily enough.
It's a terrible mess and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone because most people will hate and resent it but I can't deny that I happily lapped up every silly second of it. I laughed with it and at it, and after a while, I stopped distinguishing. It's never dull and somewhere in its compendium of conspiracies, prophecies, shoot outs and outlandish sci-fi there is a cross-pollination between the inspired ideas and the rubbish ideas and the result is a cheerfully nonsensical pleasure. Normally with bloated failures like this, the reaction is to wonder at what it could've been. With Southland Tales I think this is probably the optimal version, the mess and crappiness are integral to its vision. The mess is the message.
------------------------
And now you're back, let's look at the Arrow double-disc set which offers two versions of the film plus an assortment of extras, but maybe less than you'd hope for. The two film versions are the familiar 145-minute cut, which comes with a director's commentary, and the 160-minute version that got a rough reception at Cannes.
I went for the longer version and you can see why it didn't go over so well. It doesn't have the interface graphics that are used to get across a lot of information in the Theatrical version, which means you get even more Timberlake narration and even less of an idea of what is going on. Fifteen minutes doesn't suggest substantial differences but the new footage feels like way more than a quarter of an hour. For a start, Janeane Garofalo is in the film now, though I have no idea what exactly her character General Teena MacArthur is up to.
I'm not a fan of director's commentary but had to give Kelly's a go on this. Unfortunately, it's the worse kind where the person more or less describes to you what is happening on the screen. That said, if you're committed to this film it will probably be worth sticking with because what Kelly thinks the audience is seeing on screen, is rarely quite the same as what the audience is actually seeing.
Through the commentary and the Making Of documentary, Kelly is pushing the line that this is an unfinished film. He dreams of being given money to finish off the effects, but I don't think anybody watches this film and thinks it'd be perfect if only they'd polish up the visuals. Though he only makes (or made, he hasn't gotten to direct a film in 12 years so it's moot if he still has a career but we can hope) inscrutable, mysterious films, Kelly seems to be gripped by a desire to tell audiences exactly what is going on, precisely what he means.
The problem, as the It's A Madcap World feature makes clear, is that he writes and writes and keeps adding to the world he has created until even he has forgotten what the original point was. When you think that Southland Tales was shot on a $17 million budget in just 28 days meaning he had no margin of error at all and it's a wonder the film is even barely coherent.
Specs.
• New 2K restoration by Arrow Films, approved by director Richard Kelly and director of photography Steven Poster
• High Definition Blu-ray™ (1080p) presentations of both versions of the film: the 145-minute theatrical cut and the 160-minute “Cannes cut”, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006
• Original lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and PCM 2.0 stereo soundtracks
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Audio commentary on the theatrical cut by Richard Kelly
• It’s a Madcap World: The Making of an Unfinished Film, a new in-depth retrospective documentary on the film, featuring contributions by Richard Kelly and members of the original crew
• USIDent TV: Surveilling the Southland, an archival featurette on the making of the film, featuring interviews with the cast and crew
• This is the Way the World Ends, an archival animated short set in the Southland Tales universe
• Theatrical trailer
• Image gallery
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jacey
• Limited edition collector’s booklet featuring new writing by Peter Tonguette and Simon Ward
.
Directed by Richard Kelly.
Starring Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore, Cheri Oteri, Wallace Shawn, Lou Taylor Pucci, Amy Poehler, Nora Dunn, Bai Ling, Holmes Osbourne, Miranda Richardson, Jon Lovitz, John Larroquette and Justin Timberlake. Out on limited edition Blu-ray from Arrow Video from January 25th. 145/ 160 mins.
This is my third time reviewing Southland Tales, Kelly's still notorious second film, and at least the fourth time seeing it. The first time was for its small scale UK cinema release in 2007, move than a year after it had been booed at Canz, a very great honour it shares with the likes of La Grand Bouffe, Crash, Post Tenebras Lux and Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me. In 2021, even though I covered it last summer for a release on MUBI, when I saw Arrow was releasing a limited two-disc edition I was straight on to the PRs for a preview disc.
The inference is Southland Tales is a misunderstood classic that has grown over time, but it really hasn't. Back in 2007 when I reviewed it for the paper I gave it three stars and if I extended the star giving business to this site I doubt I'd give it any more than that today. The salient point is I'm still watching it and doing so with enthusiasm, more than for many of the films I've awarded five stars to.
So, before progressing with the disc, here's the review. If you already read this jump the next seven paragraphs.
------------------------------
As self-indulgent, megalomaniac, follow-ups to a classic debut feature go, Richard Kelly's Southland Tales is the most extreme example since Dennis Hopper followed Easy Rider with The Last Movie. It's part old testament, part Rocky Horror, part MTV Spring Break, part Fahrenheit 9/11, part bad David Lynch, at least three parts a rehash Katherine Bigelow's pre-millennial LA thriller Strange Days and a cheeky smidgen of the ending of Repo Man. But most of all, it's exactly no part Donnie Darko.
After the slow-burning success of his elegantly controlled debut movie about suburban time travel and alternative universes, writer/director Kelly (still barely in his thirties) threw all his toys into the pram with this sprawling, undisciplined sci-fi/ satire about the world ending in Los Angeles. Other than being very weird, it's as different from Donnie Darko as is possible to imagine.
The tone oscillates wildly: comedy, music videos, biblical prophesy and shoot outs all come tumbling haphazardly onto the screen. The feeling of random chaos is accentuated by Kelly populating his film with a ragtag band of former teen stars, pop singers, TV icons and any number of Saturday Night Live performers. When Christophe Lambert shows up it feels like this is less a cast, more a thespian equivalent of Bring Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses.
At the heart of it is Dwayne Johnson, dropping his wrestling moniker The Rock for the first time, who is absolutely ridiculous as a kind of Schwarzenegger figure; the action star who's married into a major political family. With his eerie frozen face and panic-filled eyes, he looks like Kryton from Red Dwarf but it's probably not a bad performance – it may be he's playing exactly the character as written.
The film is packed full of ideas, only a few of which are any good. Set around the 2008 Presidential election it lumbers itself with lots of political satire reflecting the civil liberties concerns around the Patriot Act and War on Terror. Even back then American politics was operating at a level of insanity that it looked on satire as a double dare ya. More interesting perhaps are the sci-fi strands involving perpetual motion machines and rips in the fabric of the fourth dimension but there always seems to be so much clutter in the film to fully explore anything satisfactorily.
The movie jumps in at Chapter IV (supposedly there are a set of graphic novels that flesh out the back story more fully) and right from the off it is clear that not only is there a hell of a lot going on here, but that Kelly has little or no idea on how to communicate it to an audience. So instead we have Justin Timberlake as his mop-up man, popping up to provide narration explanations of what the images have failed to communicate. Actually, it's nowhere near as incomprehensible as its reputation. The story can be followed easily enough.
It's a terrible mess and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone because most people will hate and resent it but I can't deny that I happily lapped up every silly second of it. I laughed with it and at it, and after a while, I stopped distinguishing. It's never dull and somewhere in its compendium of conspiracies, prophecies, shoot outs and outlandish sci-fi there is a cross-pollination between the inspired ideas and the rubbish ideas and the result is a cheerfully nonsensical pleasure. Normally with bloated failures like this, the reaction is to wonder at what it could've been. With Southland Tales I think this is probably the optimal version, the mess and crappiness are integral to its vision. The mess is the message.
------------------------
And now you're back, let's look at the Arrow double-disc set which offers two versions of the film plus an assortment of extras, but maybe less than you'd hope for. The two film versions are the familiar 145-minute cut, which comes with a director's commentary, and the 160-minute version that got a rough reception at Cannes.
I went for the longer version and you can see why it didn't go over so well. It doesn't have the interface graphics that are used to get across a lot of information in the Theatrical version, which means you get even more Timberlake narration and even less of an idea of what is going on. Fifteen minutes doesn't suggest substantial differences but the new footage feels like way more than a quarter of an hour. For a start, Janeane Garofalo is in the film now, though I have no idea what exactly her character General Teena MacArthur is up to.
I'm not a fan of director's commentary but had to give Kelly's a go on this. Unfortunately, it's the worse kind where the person more or less describes to you what is happening on the screen. That said, if you're committed to this film it will probably be worth sticking with because what Kelly thinks the audience is seeing on screen, is rarely quite the same as what the audience is actually seeing.
Through the commentary and the Making Of documentary, Kelly is pushing the line that this is an unfinished film. He dreams of being given money to finish off the effects, but I don't think anybody watches this film and thinks it'd be perfect if only they'd polish up the visuals. Though he only makes (or made, he hasn't gotten to direct a film in 12 years so it's moot if he still has a career but we can hope) inscrutable, mysterious films, Kelly seems to be gripped by a desire to tell audiences exactly what is going on, precisely what he means.
The problem, as the It's A Madcap World feature makes clear, is that he writes and writes and keeps adding to the world he has created until even he has forgotten what the original point was. When you think that Southland Tales was shot on a $17 million budget in just 28 days meaning he had no margin of error at all and it's a wonder the film is even barely coherent.
Specs.
• New 2K restoration by Arrow Films, approved by director Richard Kelly and director of photography Steven Poster
• High Definition Blu-ray™ (1080p) presentations of both versions of the film: the 145-minute theatrical cut and the 160-minute “Cannes cut”, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006
• Original lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and PCM 2.0 stereo soundtracks
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Audio commentary on the theatrical cut by Richard Kelly
• It’s a Madcap World: The Making of an Unfinished Film, a new in-depth retrospective documentary on the film, featuring contributions by Richard Kelly and members of the original crew
• USIDent TV: Surveilling the Southland, an archival featurette on the making of the film, featuring interviews with the cast and crew
• This is the Way the World Ends, an archival animated short set in the Southland Tales universe
• Theatrical trailer
• Image gallery
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jacey
• Limited edition collector’s booklet featuring new writing by Peter Tonguette and Simon Ward
.
