Humboldt County is a film that largely fails because of the inability of the filmmakers to sustain their faith in their subject. What begins as a fairly routine setup takes on a unique turn, which gives the film promise that they simply can’t deliver on.
In the opening moments, we are introduced to Peter, a med student in the midst of a final exam. It’s obvious to us non-specialists that he’s failing, as he seems totally disengaged from every aspect of the work, displaying some of the worst bedside manner of a medical professional. We learn soon that he has failed this exam, primarily due to a potentially fatal misdiagnosis, a failure that will cost him a prestigious internship. We also learn that the professor who failed him is his father, and so we glimpse the broken nature of his relationships and some insight to his disengagement.
Working through that failure leads him to a one-night stand with the woman that acted as his patient in the exam. After their night together, he hops in the car with her for her drive home. What he didn’t know is that she’s taking him to Humboldt County, a rural county in Northern California, and a long way from his LA home. Her family is an eccentric collection of marijuana growers, living a simple existence that understandably places high value on living below the radar.
The idea of drawing us into a community of marijuana farmers is a fascinating and unique setup, and is filled with unfulfilled potential. His new friend quickly leaves town, leaving him stranded with her family. His discomfort slowly cools as he finds himself drawn to the genuineness of their community. The family lives under the leadership of Jack, played by Brad Dourif who delivers easily the strongest performance in the film. Jack was once a professor at UC Berkeley, but left that life behind for a life lived close to the land and in quiet peace. The film wants us to be drawn to their genuine community, as Jack models and preaches a message of a quiet family life, growing his marijuana without ambition, key to keeping the crops small and the feds at bay. Unfortunately, his family is struggling with his message, as his son is secretly growing a large stash with the hopes of striking it rich. Capitalism has invaded this contrarian culture, and with it comes the threat of federal interest and a crushing of this dream life they have assembled.
Obviously, for most of us peering into a community built around marijuana and asking us to admire this community is a pretty tough hurdle to jump. Had the filmmakers stayed committed to this, though, they may have been able to pull it off. The acting, with the exception of Jack, is pretty lethargic, but it is serviceable, and we still see the genuine nature of their community and contrast with the coldness of Peter’s world. We can understand why he might find this alternative life inviting.
And yet, the filmmakers fail us, opting by the end for routine melodrama and emotional manipulation instead of the genuine, if alternative community that the film celebrates throughout. The plot falls apart by the end, and with it our trust in the filmmakers’ world. The community that seems to offer much promise ultimately appears hollow, and Peter’s final decisions seem scripted rather than driven by genuine human connection.
Still, the film offers intriguing moments as it reflects on the desire for genuine human connection and the fragmentation that results in lives that are consumed with career or money. This is a theme that should resonate and is worth wrestling with, and the admiration of the alternative community seems to serve as a mere storytelling foil rather than an authentic anchor for genuine community. Pulling the question away from Humboldt County, the film caused me to reflect on the emptiness that results in our modern culture, and the need for an alternative vision for living life together. It’s a vision that the film can’t deliver, but a vision that is worth pursuing.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Burn After Reading: A Review
It shouldn’t be a surprise that the brothers who gave us O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Fargo, and The Big Lebowski know how to put on a farce. And from the opening moments of Burn After Reading we know that’s what we’re getting. Things just feel different after the Coen Brothers’ Oscar-winning turn at No Country for Old Men.
Apparently, the brothers wrote the scripts for Burn and No Country at the same time, alternating days on each. It explains a lot, as Burn brings us over-the-top comedy in the same way that No Country gave us gut-wrenching looks at a dark world. It is as if the former was the constant cleansing they needed from writing the latter. And yet, the worldviews that the two films seem to express just don’t seem that far apart.
Burn After Reading initially introduces us to Osborne Cox, played by John Malkovich, a frustrated middle-aged CIA analyst who quits his job rather than being transferred by his higher-ups. A self-proclaimed genius surrounded by lesser mortals, he decides to devote himself to writing his memoirs of his time in the CIA. His wife, played by Tilda Swinton, is less than excited about the idea. But then again, she’s less than excited about Osborne himself, taking up with their family friend Harry Pfarrer, a hyper-active, endorphin-addicted sex junkie played broadly by George Clooney.
Alongside this love triangle and its complications, we also get to know Linda Litzke, as Francis McDormand gives us an echo of her turn in Fargo, as a gym employee frustrated by her insurance’s refusal to pay for extensive elective plastic surgery. She sees her opportunity when her co-worker Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), discovers a disc left by a gym patron that looks to be “spy stuff.” Thinking that they would get a reward for turning it over, they call the owner of the disc, who turns out to be Osborne. Rather than locating good espionage material, they have found a copy of his memoirs. And so the chase is on.
This is a comedy of errors where nobody is innocent, and nobody has it together. The CIA is keeping close tabs on the situation, as Litzke tries to sell the information to the Russians after failing to get money out of Cox. They show remarkable prowess at gathering information, as the CIA higher-ups get wonderfully detailed reports of everything that’s happening, but nobody, including them, can seem to make sense of why this is happening or what information Litzke actually has. Long on resources but short on intelligence, the CIA is no better off here than anyone else.
I’ll leave the plot to your own experience, because this is one that is worth seeing for the adults that can handle it, but I’m interested in the film’s connections with No Country. Last year’s Oscar winner looked at a world that was spinning out of control, and saw decent men who try to fight for good causes feeling lost and powerless in the face of incomprehensible evil. In that film, you had three central characters - a good guy, a bad guy, and one that sat in the middle.
Here, there is no clear distinction among the characters. Everybody in this film is radically self-involved, or arrogant, or broken by their addictions, and bent on pursuing their own interests at all times even in the face of great tragedy that befalls their supposed friends and lovers. The characters are richly drawn and richly acted, and so they are a delight to watch on screen, but they would be decidedly abhorrent people to actually know. But even in their caricature, they are reminiscent of everyday people, and shine a light on the basic flaws that we all share.
In a particular insightful comment on the entire movie, the CIA head asks as he hears the story, “So what did we learn from this?” His underling shrugs and says, “Um... I don’t know.” “I don’t know either.” That’s it. Nothing learned. Nothing gained. Just weathering another story unfolding involve radically self-involved people, pursuing their own selfish ends to the destruction of others around them.
In a sense, Burn offers an even bleaker view of the universe than No Country, though wrapped in hilarious packaging. It is perhaps possible to dismiss the evil of No Country because of our temptation to identify with the good guy who ultimately just escapes from dealing with it, rather than identifying with the middle guy who gets taken down by this evil. Here, the film gently prods us to see ourselves in this middle light, with the same capacity for selfishness and evil as anyone else we encounter. What neither film conceives us is a way out, an escape valve for this kind of doomed story.
Burn After Reading may offer a useful reminder to a Christian audience who can be tempted to forget the diagnosis before offering a prescription. I find myself resonating with their diagnosis, which increases my desire to share the prescription. And that’s more than worth a few laughs along the way.
Apparently, the brothers wrote the scripts for Burn and No Country at the same time, alternating days on each. It explains a lot, as Burn brings us over-the-top comedy in the same way that No Country gave us gut-wrenching looks at a dark world. It is as if the former was the constant cleansing they needed from writing the latter. And yet, the worldviews that the two films seem to express just don’t seem that far apart.
Burn After Reading initially introduces us to Osborne Cox, played by John Malkovich, a frustrated middle-aged CIA analyst who quits his job rather than being transferred by his higher-ups. A self-proclaimed genius surrounded by lesser mortals, he decides to devote himself to writing his memoirs of his time in the CIA. His wife, played by Tilda Swinton, is less than excited about the idea. But then again, she’s less than excited about Osborne himself, taking up with their family friend Harry Pfarrer, a hyper-active, endorphin-addicted sex junkie played broadly by George Clooney.
Alongside this love triangle and its complications, we also get to know Linda Litzke, as Francis McDormand gives us an echo of her turn in Fargo, as a gym employee frustrated by her insurance’s refusal to pay for extensive elective plastic surgery. She sees her opportunity when her co-worker Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), discovers a disc left by a gym patron that looks to be “spy stuff.” Thinking that they would get a reward for turning it over, they call the owner of the disc, who turns out to be Osborne. Rather than locating good espionage material, they have found a copy of his memoirs. And so the chase is on.
This is a comedy of errors where nobody is innocent, and nobody has it together. The CIA is keeping close tabs on the situation, as Litzke tries to sell the information to the Russians after failing to get money out of Cox. They show remarkable prowess at gathering information, as the CIA higher-ups get wonderfully detailed reports of everything that’s happening, but nobody, including them, can seem to make sense of why this is happening or what information Litzke actually has. Long on resources but short on intelligence, the CIA is no better off here than anyone else.
I’ll leave the plot to your own experience, because this is one that is worth seeing for the adults that can handle it, but I’m interested in the film’s connections with No Country. Last year’s Oscar winner looked at a world that was spinning out of control, and saw decent men who try to fight for good causes feeling lost and powerless in the face of incomprehensible evil. In that film, you had three central characters - a good guy, a bad guy, and one that sat in the middle.
Here, there is no clear distinction among the characters. Everybody in this film is radically self-involved, or arrogant, or broken by their addictions, and bent on pursuing their own interests at all times even in the face of great tragedy that befalls their supposed friends and lovers. The characters are richly drawn and richly acted, and so they are a delight to watch on screen, but they would be decidedly abhorrent people to actually know. But even in their caricature, they are reminiscent of everyday people, and shine a light on the basic flaws that we all share.
In a particular insightful comment on the entire movie, the CIA head asks as he hears the story, “So what did we learn from this?” His underling shrugs and says, “Um... I don’t know.” “I don’t know either.” That’s it. Nothing learned. Nothing gained. Just weathering another story unfolding involve radically self-involved people, pursuing their own selfish ends to the destruction of others around them.
In a sense, Burn offers an even bleaker view of the universe than No Country, though wrapped in hilarious packaging. It is perhaps possible to dismiss the evil of No Country because of our temptation to identify with the good guy who ultimately just escapes from dealing with it, rather than identifying with the middle guy who gets taken down by this evil. Here, the film gently prods us to see ourselves in this middle light, with the same capacity for selfishness and evil as anyone else we encounter. What neither film conceives us is a way out, an escape valve for this kind of doomed story.
Burn After Reading may offer a useful reminder to a Christian audience who can be tempted to forget the diagnosis before offering a prescription. I find myself resonating with their diagnosis, which increases my desire to share the prescription. And that’s more than worth a few laughs along the way.
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