Author: BRWC

How I Came to The Work of Actor RUSS RUSSO

(or rather, how it came to me)

by Pablo D’Stair

Like much of the art that has come to mean so much to me in life—from the work of Joyce and Mamet, to McGoohan’s The Prisoner to the giallos of Argento et al.—the work of actor Russ Russo was not so much something I discovered, as it was something the world repeatedly conspired to make me aware and appreciative of.  If not for a continuous series of coincidences that eventually revealed themselves to be overt nudges, insistent fingers of the hand-of-art pointing at something I was imperatively meant to be aware of, I would be in the likely position of most reading this article—that is, I would find myself, at the mention of the fellow’s name, able to offer nothing but the question “Russ Russo?…yeah, who is that?”

What follows is the true history of how I was, by no effort of my own, made aware of the works of an actor I truly believe to be one of the finest currently working, an artist who I count myself fortunate to have eventually made the personal acquaintance of.

***

In all plain candor, I cannot even say that I “discovered Russ Russo” through the film Williamsburg, though it was in the frames of it I first laid eyes on, heard voice of him. That is, I have no actual memory of where I watched the film, under what circumstance (was it in theatre or on video? was I alone or in the company of others? did I half-interestedly pick it out based on cover art or was it shown to me offhand by an acquaintance?)–all that I do know is that from the moment I viewed this little Jarumusch-esque jewel of independent cinema, Russo became a back-burner-presence in my thoughts. I did not—as fine as their performances were, do not get me wrong—take the time to consciously note the names of any of the other performers when the credits rolled, but know I took a distinct moment out to see who played ‘Brother James’ and from that moment “Russ Russo” would innocently crop into my thought processes, my little daydreams of making films of my own. “Who would I cast in X or Y or Z role?” I would, in reverie, so often ask, and one of the most frequent answers would be “That guy from that one film, Williamsburg—that guy Russ Russo.”

***

The coincidental progression of my becoming aware of his work continued in the following way: one of the other constant answers to my fanciful question of being a filmmaker with the authority to cast whom I felt was “Norman Reedus” (an actor whose work I became aware of and as passionate for in as random a way as Russo’s, Reedus first announcing himself to me in his role opposite Alan Rickman in a more-or-less unheard of thriller called Dark Harbor). I here mention Reedus and his random introduction to my thought-life most particularly, as it was through him (in a sense) that I next actively “encountered” Russ Russo. I had written a series of essays on the short films Reedus directed and of a lazy afternoon (this years and years after having watched Williamsburg) I happened to check Twitter to find some fellow had tweeted his enthusiasm for one of the essays in particular: This fellow?—Russ Russo.  I had some brief interaction, very casual, via correspondence with Russ, confirming he was, indeed, the self-same actor I had in mind, but nothing further than a few “I dig your work” messages exchanged between us before my life, as it often does, soon swallowed me up in other things.

***

Why I was watching television of an evening, staying at a friend’s (surfing the far more channels than I had at that time access to in my own home) why I was there with some idle moments at just that time of the evening I also cannot recall, but landing on the G4 network just as a screen went black, an actor’s name appeared, alone on the screen: Russ Russo. The film was an intriguing sci-fi short called Against the Wall, Russo, it seemed to me at the time, maybe in the role because the filmmakers had wanted to cast “someone who looked a lot like Christian Bale might look” (funny story, Russo later did play “Christian Bale” due to his likeness in the “Call Me, Maybe” parody video built around Nolan’s Batman franchise). Thing was, the short was just to my taste—simple, unflashy, measured—rather like a delicious teaser for what might be something larger one day, but just as much self-contained as any truly great short story in an issue of Asimov’s or any pulp anthology of old. A ten minute short, no other purpose than to exist for the sake of its subdued coolness, I nodded my approval at the thing and twice as much at Russo, himself, for his participation. I was keen to see if I could get back in touch, but also too busy to find time.

***

So—a penchant of mine is to frequent the ol’ RedBox, every once in awhile, with the particular intention of grabbing some inconsequential movie to pass a rare free evening with—usually, I am after a “bad but watchable film” (though, I must admit, several of my favorite films in the last several years have come from such a hunt, two in particular being 388 Arletta Avenue and a marvelous, all-but-completely overlooked gem called Skew) and usually it is a horror film I take away. On a night in particular, I nabbed a thing called Donner Pass, imagining it would be drivel. The film opens in flashback, a “re-enactment” of the fate of Donner Party and there, bearded (and, as always, giving ten times better a performance than the material he was performing necessarily called for) was (or I thought it was) Russo. His character lasts not long, two, three minutes screen time at most, some half dozen or ten-at-most lines of dialogue, but the gravity I now readily expected of him was there (one of those things a keen film viewer notices, one of those ancillary things that so often make one glad they watched an otherwise tossaway episode of Law and Order or took in a matinee of some dime-a-dozen bank heist or car chase film). Here was Russo, now lurking in my private RedBox haunt, a thing I verified via the Donner Pass credits and by (first time in forever) dotting through Twitter to find Russo was, quite nonchalantly, mentioning the film was now available.Not to be remiss, let me add that the film was pretty solid—nothing I wanted to write home about, but other than a kind of average last act it was something that had a verve, a reason to exist beyond just being an on-the-cheap horror flick—there is an energy to it I like, similar to that of some Ewan McGregor movies I love but don’t feel lived up to the full potential energy their scripts and makers likely had within (Rouge Trader, Nora, The Serpent’s Kiss, in case you wonder which Ewan films I mean).

***

Sometime after that is when I, through learning of his attempt to Kickstarter a film project he had written called Heat Wave, was able to briefly make Russo’s acquaintance (this—another odd connection I will get to in a moment) made possible by the fact that I was, quite randomly, in Los Angeles to spend a day on the set of Paul Schrader’s films The Canyons, which I was a backer of. That encounter and my thoughts on him as an artist I set down in two articles here and here.

***

Touch was lost after the Kickstarter reached its goal and he got busy with work. I, meanwhile, continued on being busy and taking submissions of manuscripts to the literary press I co-run. In a submission, I was told I should check out another author, a friend of the current submission-writer, a friend too shy, allegedly, to submit work herself. The name of this author was Darelene Kingslee. And when I Googled the name, for whatever, completely baffling reason, the third or fourth entry down on the results page was a link to a film starring not Darlene Kingslee, but an actress called Faye Kingslee—a short film it turned out (his name bolded in the Google result) also starring Russ Russo. And again, a short, perfectly atmospheric and contained piece, everything dependent on subtlety in expression, in unspoken performance on the part of the central male figure, Russo (who, I might add, now having seen him in several roles…I still could not immediately be certain was the same Russo, so absolute is his immersion in any role, his performance nothing to do with “I am an actor” but instead “I am just exactly what this character calls for, myself-as-connected-to-any-other-of-my-work effaced”). The film (please do view it here) a simple thing, a take-it-or-leave it to most, I have no doubt, but his performance, for my taste, was hypnotic (and would have been, I say with emphasis, even without the fun, growing set of coincidences so evidently wanting him in front of my eyes).

 ***

I love the television program Breaking Bad (as any worthwhile, thinking person does) and in it most especially I was fond of the character Gustavo Fring, portrayed so amazingly by Giancarlo Esposito. Learning Esposito was a character on a (at that time) new NBC television program called Revolution, I tuned in to a random episode, despite my more than modest dislike of most things “J.J. Abrams” related. See—I have a real love for not the central or even main-supporting casts of television programs (I like them, don’t misunderstand) but a dear, dear love and fascination for those actors and actresses who have small scenes to play, play them so often seamlessly and with more art than it takes (in my opinion) for the main casts to do their roles (and if not “more art” then at the very least with an air of artistry and absolute devotion that seems out of proportion to doing a “bit part” in a scene most viewers are not paying strict attention to them in, just seeing them as means to an end for what the central cast members are up to—this all said here just to inflict some of my random, ranting cinema/television philosophy on anyone reading). So I was not exactly surprised that there, front and center, pre-credits, was Russ Russo (his character not lasting too long, per the status quo it seemed) again turning in a mostly dialogue-free performance of intense gravity to mesmerizing effect, but was more delighted. “Give Russ a fucking show, Abrams!” I thought to myself and, indeed, think I did get in touch with Russo again to tell him my feelings were so.

***

Now, again we did not keep in any kind of touch—I always worried I was pestering him or that he might have thought I would only be getting in touch to subtly bug him about “What happened to Heat Wave?” as I had contributed  a modest bit of dough and had not since heard news about it. So it was months and months later that, quite randomly, I received an e-mail from him explaining he would be working on a new film to be called Novel (actually, he told me it would be called The Elusive D.B. Cooper, but the title became Novel by the time I found footage). “What was so interesting about this that he had to e-mail me about it?” one might wonder: Well, it was to be the second mainstream starring role for adult film star James Deen, who of course is the star of Schrader’s The Canyons and someone, in our one encounter, Russo and I had discussed. I chuckled, kind of felt maybe I was really just in a coma dream and that only a handful of faces and names were accessible by my brain to develop a sleeping-state reality, because otherwise it was just too odd that my circles of random reference were constricting, coalescing, joining in to some kind of absolute Single. Little could Russo know, of course, that what was much more fascinating to me than even the coincidental presence of Deen was that the film was not officially being filmed yet, only a very stylish, “preview” of the film, a short-film in its own also serving as teaser and “chapter one” of the project—this exact method of getting attention to a project something I had (as I often did, but in this case only days before) been discussing with some friends about doing with a film we wanted to get off the ground. I watched the trailer, intrigued by the cursory outline of plot Russo had given in his e-mail as much as just by Russo’s presence (I had, by this time, looked up his filmography and knew he had a growing body of work much of which I was unfamiliar with, but had never, actively, sought out his work, maybe unconsciously preferring the way it would just poke its head in and out of my life, whenever it saw fit). Again: an artwork in itself, the preview a complete world, an intrigue, a film almost as good already, not existent, than it could ever be in completion; “a teaser that contained something more impressive than could its realization as whole,” I remember was my impression…except for one thing: Not enough Russo. Or except for two thing: not enough Russo and the flat fact that by this time I was so convinced that if Russo lent his time and talents, his pure artistic enthusiasm toward the director and the material, than just like even in the sometimes less-than-spectacular films I had seen him in sometimes, there must be some core greatness, something that if realized would be towering, the future, what and the way things should be done.

 ***

I still don’t seek out Russo’s work actively, perhaps to my shame, don’t (until this article) go around name dropping him to promote his interests or to (perhaps somewhere) get some hipster/indie film buff cred at casually mentioning the work of a fine actor-in-obscura, an actor whose projects, short or feature, completed or gestating, truly give me the greatest confidence that the renaissance of independent cinema I believe the US is having (and is poised to soon have even a more full version of) is a reality, not just a fervent hope of mine, but it occurs to me that the list grows and grows of random encounters I truly hope the world affords me (I am waiting for you to “ahem” over my shoulder Blue Collar Boys, to receive a seemingly “sorry wrong number” call from you The Projectionist, to suddenly have you be waiting around a corner like a friend I met once in a dream once, Shreveport—I am waiting, though I encourage anyone reading to venture forth and take these and all things Russo-related by the face, the shoulders, and embrace them with abandon).

“I had to rearrange their faces

And give them all another name”

a freeform analysis of Paul Schrader’s THE CANYONS

by Pablo D’Stair

A Brief Introductory Note: I was a Kickstarter contributor to this film, way back at the get-go—before any cast was on board, any frames were shot, and before the film came to be viewed only through increasingly narrowing pigeonholes—my several essays in various styles from before production, during, and after can be found at this site here, here, here, and here to anyone interested. I note this only to be clear that the below is nothing to do with the current trend in writing about this film as a product, is not a “review” of any kind, but an essay minutely exploring my personal take on the result of an Art Film I am proud to have a personal association with.

It has been said, and certainly it is true, that the line between a film being “auteur-ed” and a film being “a turd” is often razor thin—indeed, the very nature of Art Film not only necessitates this hair’s breadth between Cinema and Claptrap, but the tension, the discomfort (be it in the form of confusion, cringingness, or stifling yawns) of an audience member in forming an opinion based solely on their individual experience with a work rather than through a cobbling together of various this-and-that (be it the individual opinions of others, the—though I say this dubiously—“communal opinions” presented by movie reviews, or even encounters with director and writer interview/commentary) is the necessary fuel to making Art Film pictures move in any meaningful way.

This, yes, differs from even very fine Cinema that I lay outside the realm of “Art Film”: We Don’t Live Here Anymore (the first example of fine Cinema, though not Art Film, that springs to mind—My Life Without Me or Take This Waltz being two others that quickly follow via free association of Mark Ruffalo and Sarah Polley) seeks not to voyeuristically focus the audience’s attention on their own experience as audience, but to transmute the fictive reality, rendered full and emotionally, of the Cinema-on-screen into the lived experience of the viewer and does so in (though harsh) humanistic and sympathetic ways—that is, the Cinema gives life to the figures it presents and asks the audience to understand them in a symbiotic/vicarious way. The Canyons, like all firmly Art Film, asks the audience not to be moved to a suggested contemplation or to empathize, but to out-and-out Invent—and it does so while giving no emotional prompt to do any such thing, no rhetorical suggestion as to why one should even bother—it presents itself and all that lies within it as pure-cipher—cipher not in a “I just watched Eraserhead and what the fuck did any of that even mean with regard to the wider world!?” way, but in the sense that it sets each and every of its component parts to zero, to mute, and says to the viewer “If you want this to work, you’ll have to toggle with the knobs and adjust the tracking” much in the way Abel Ferrara’s The Driller Killer does (that being an Art Film I, personally, truly do love, though would have trouble giving one convincing reason to another party why so, let alone why they ought to, as well).

 No bones, The Canyons is ready to be looked at as not even crass but simply as crap, to be seen as (this I overhead someone say after a viewing and, while not the most apropos, I feel it nonetheless bears being immortalized in print) “something like a Tele-novella dry-humping a Justin Bieber poster,”— it is Static Art that does nothing to solicit the continued attention of a viewer, that welcomes disengagement as a perfectly honest reaction.

Now, emphatically I want to note that I am not trying to flim-flam around anything—surely it is true that if one were to give meticulous attention to any film, even Paul Blart: Mall Cop, one would find all of the ins-and-outs of it thoughtful, logical, interesting in their own merits, while this doesn’t mean for one second that Paul Blart is “any good” or “worth the consideration”; and, yes, it is true that if one wants to love something a way will be found to make this love justifiable (the same true in the reverse or in the ambivalent middle) so I state here, true to the nature of Paul Schrader’s film, itself, that this particular essay will leave it to the audience to determine where the opinion of the author rests with regard to quality and worthwhileness.

***

To the film itself (maybe stop here if you haven’t seen it, because without knowing the film the following will make zero sense), the ciphers begin with the title:

Especially to anyone familiar with the The Canyons’ tagline (…it’s not The Hills) this title could easily be looked at as a glib (not even satiric) bit of snark in the direction of a certain pseudo-reality television series—but it is to those not familiar, or interested in, such external and peripheral things that the title might also speak. Much as Bret Ellis’ infamous American Psycho begins in such a way as to let the reader know the material being read is set behind the gates of Hell (“Abandon all hope ye who enter here is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank…), The Canyons is titled as a photonegative to the traditional notion of The Hollywood Hills: that place where dreams, egos, passions, indiscretions, geniuses and ham-fists collide to produce majesty, temples, art and iconography that excuses all of the petty and self-serving backdoor games the adoring world knows go on to get a film from script to screen. Schrader’s film is not set in, nor is it an exploration of, “The Hills” (nor, I make so bold as to say, is it a suggestion that The Hills have become The Canyons)—the title is a fact of place, the name of a particular world, and is there as signpost to indicate that for audience to look for clues or meaning pertaining to another place inside its recesses is folly.

And this cipher of photo-negativity continues to the film’s motif (book-ended at opening and closing credits and littered throughout at pace-car intervals) of shuttered and decrepit movie houses:

Yes, it is tempting (and even warranted) to take these images as meta-commentary, as angst and dismay on the part of the film-maker, as a statement that “film is dead” or some such trifling and chop-logical thing; but tempting (in equal measure or not, depending on one’s wont) is to set the images in the cinematic language of only what is being presented by the artist and to assess them there, no armchair detective work of reading movie-magazine interviews et cetera at all necessary.  Imagine, if you will, the reverse of these photo-montages: theatres bustling, temples of art (not even necessarily of fame and entertainment) theatres in pristine glory, frequented by countless pilgrim audiences who passionately travel to pay tribute to the dream-makers and to their own dreams; picture these theatres made alive as they would be in the glorious Hollywood Hills and think of that which would be elicited in us, the viewers, were we to see a film illustrating the backstabbing and self-aggrandizing figures whose names are set in stars and cement, the troubled and dark-artist souls and the dollar hungry financiers we would all forgive of their every trespass for allowing us Academy Awards and the spectacle of Blockbuster Red Carpet affairs, for gifting us with immortalized beauty made perfect, beauty whose behind-the-scenes ugliness we would gladly ignore to fawn over and elevate its successfully transcendent result, its larger-than-life, falseness-made-more-than-true.  Picture all of this while you watch the nothing, the absence, think on it while you see the power-games, the megalomania of the listless no-ones (the players in The Canyons) who know how only how to pay dullard lip-service to terms like “movies” and “actor” and “producer” without even a single desire amongst the lot of them to go beneath the surface of such terms—this is the world Schrader’s film poetics render, the world of all that is not and peopled by all who are nobody. We are in The Canyons, the cinematic language reminds us as the title first introduces, and let us not, the audience, truly think for a moment we are not, as do the poor wraiths who we observe littering the purgatorio.

And the cipher of the film’s interior components, next. First our players:

The cavalier bastard of Christian, who is nothing of what his glazed on persona suggests, who is hardly a cut-throat Producer ready to power-play to get his ship from port at any cost (as in Hollywood such a figure might be), but instead is a producer-of-nothing, less than a dilettante in the “movie-business,” just a bloated tick already smug and set-in and desireless of its already strained belly; the wide-eyed, “just off the bus” actor Ryan, the innocent who got off at the wrong stop and just doesn’t know it, poor lad who cannot see that for all of his (perhaps) wide-eyed desire at immortality (or even just stardom) the most he can expect for his humility-cum-vainglory is a hoodwinkery disguised as a “role” in a movie that doesn’t exist (and even if it did would only just hardly); the earnest Gina, working diligently, tirelessly, as Christian’s assistant, the very portrait of one who believes in that genuine “indie spirit,” who thinks that through some unseen hand an alchemy will occur that could make a “shitty movie about teens being slaughtered by a pissed off ghost in a factory” into Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre if only enough faith is applied; and Tara, the false ingénue, the actress who (for all the film actually shows us) never was one, the less famous than a Factory Girl personage dully going along with the role of being a (if only relative to her direct surroundings) meaningful presence, the one who wants not the reason for notoriety (or even the notoriety) of the struggled-Starlet-made-good, but who is contented (and make no mistake, the film shows us she is) with the trappings and suits of her faux-woe.

These blanks, taken as they are presented by Schrader and Ellis and by the performers in the roles, are Nothings and they dredge from viewers not a tinker’s damn for their wrung hands and cocksmanship in and of themselves—they are proxy-suits to be tried on or left on the hanger, the film itself a kind of Choose-Your-Own-Ennui to be played, replayed, or not played at all. Yet to a purpose (how much of one is the name of the game for each observer to determine) in that were the characters that which they are not, were their interiors at all a match to their facades—were Christian a young man concerned with film (or even sex), were Ryan a fresh face really on the cusp of what could be a big break, were Gina correct about instead of mercilessly blind to the reality of the world she feels she is a part of, were Tara an actual artist invested in something she feels an earnest sense might be lost (were those cinema houses shiny and boisterous with not only films but with eagerly awaited coming attractions)—every tick and tock of The Canyons would urge from us, the audience, a dread attention. Again: think of these people as the photo-negative of what we see them being on screen, think of them as what they could seem if not regarded in the language of the film in particular—like with jazz, be reminded of the notes that are not there.

Breaking in on myself with a particular, with a codex to the cipher, let us note the scene in which Schrader and Ellis have Tara put the question to Gina: “Do you even really like movies? I mean, really like movies? When was the last time you saw a movie in a theatre? Something that was really important to you?” Now, taken at face value, in the roil of landscape and people-scape we as audience have been introduced to by the time this little speech crops up, it is tempting (and again, even warranted) to guffaw and dismiss this all as, at best, silly blather, and, at worst, a misfired and ill-placed mouth-piecing on the part of writer or director, as a meta-chat about the “state of contemporary film”; but again, we must think of where we are and who is saying this and what it means for such a nonentity to spake thusly (and, therefore, what it means for us to listen). There is no hint that Tara ever was passionate, that she ever loved movies, that she ever went to a theatre to see something important to her (not unless we assign her this virtue, of our own invention—the film does not) not a stitch of The Canyons shows us that the persona making these lamentations is even capable of feeling them as such, but the film, itself,  knows we, as audience (by the very fact we are watching—and some of us helping produce—the film at hand) understand only all too well—and so this is presentation of the falseness of Tara (and those around her) and of the depths to which this falseness runs. Again, were Tara a Michelle Williams figure toiling undiscovered in Hollywood, burning with ambition and talent, earnestly attempting to get Take This Waltz made while under the thumb of some dickhead who was only concerned with sex and money, were that Tara making these same mournful statements it would mean something. But here the film shows us it means nothing—there are no movies in The Canyons, no feelings, no laments, just surface level sayings meant to give false appearance to whomever is in front of the speaker (let us not forget that in this scene both Tara and Gina are wantonly being deceitful with each other at the behest of other parties, trying to get clues to each other’s true states-of-mind to report back with—not a note of their “little chat” is earnest at any level, according to the filmic world they inhabit and we are peeking down into).

Returning to our ciphers, let us take the stylistics of the film:

First, the pornography that is not pornography, that is the dry and flaccid appearance of that which should be salacious, dirty, arousing of something base (artistic and base, meant to urge audience to release)—no, by the language of this film we get neither stiff nor wet (at least not without our own effort) for the fornication and the shifts in power it presents are, we know, inside of a world that has no mind on result, that values neither arousal nor climax: the sex, as full frontal, masturbatory, coupled, threesomed, foursomed as it might be, is just the same as squinting idly at the icons on any random internet porn-tube (Will this get me off? Will this? What’s going on in this one?). So again, this seems it could be a misfired fault, but just as much, again imagine we were privy to A-Listers volunteer cuckolding with each other and share-and-share-aliking with random strangers and then (to borrow some dialogue from the film) BAM! we see full to capacity cinema houses and see these same A-List Hyperions on magazine covers and glad-handing with rabid fans behind tape lines—why, this would be fascinating! The sex of those who are triumphant, the sleaze of those who also offer celluloid arête! Were we watching a film of such people, their every lick to moisten hand to cock, every girl-on-girl forcing guy-on-guy would be riddled with meaning and intrigue and would somehow speak to things higher. But Schrader’s film in not set in such a world, but in one that does not speak (at least not directly) of things higher, it speaks of those who only value the gloss and half-heartedly dry tug themselves to sleepy malaise, desiring, if anything, nothing more than they already have and (maybe) just not to lose those crumbs come morning.

Then, the cipher of the Thriller persona of the script (which I find the most intriguing thing of all):

Inserted into this lackluster nega-world found on the underside of glorious Hollywood’s foot heel we have a classically, slow paced rise to an “eruption of violence,” a meticulous drip-drip-drip of façade cracking and power finally being taken in the form of life-and-death, control desperately snatched in the aftermath of lack-of-control. Set in a world where there are circumstances and humanist consequence, where there is some higher calling to something (Art, Ethics…anything) the gradual disintegration of all present into bloodshed and the subsequent forced-to-soldier-on in complicit silence would be disquieting, even harrowing (shit, it would be Eyes Wide Shut, Knife in the Water, or Unfaithful) and that Ellis’ script plays a take-your-time Highsmith pace with the noir cannot help but, again, suggest to an audience all of the absence they are seeing. “Murder, now? Who cares?”  is the surface reaction the film almost demands of an audience—indeed, taken as a plot-point-by-plot-point result of what came before, the (pointedly off screen) butchering of a peripheral cast figure borders on ludicrous (indeed, taken without considering it in the full expanse of the film, up to the final frame, it is quite ludicrous) but taken in the whole arc (looked back at once the end of the film is known and can give retro-meaning to what lead to it) the very discombobulating presence of such violence (and at the exact figure the violence is visited upon) comes from the flat fact that “Nobody cares—inside of the film or out.” The death of a peripheral figure (as I see Cynthia, though some may disagree) of someone really not-of-the-world-except-by-association of the main cast, is the death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, is the death of one of us poor hump observers, and it cements not our distance from the people and events and amorality we are watching on screen but their (and its) distance and intense aloofness from us—nothing matters down there in the Canyons, least of all who keeps breathing. Again, a reverse-imaging of The Thriller—a film that, from the very writing, instead of doing everything to make you care about violence aimed at innocents is perfectly contented that no one viewing might well bother to, in any empathetic way, process the randomness and cruelty of the death.

***

Now—all of that being said, it remains to touch on a few elements that seem integral to the language of this specific Art Film.  Firstly, it is (not surprising considering both the writer and director at work) a film that is not “first viewing hearty” one that is not written to explain itself as it goes along and to be summed up in a final moment, no harm no foul if never viewed again. Like most slow burn material (regardless of whether one likes it or not) the film has a soberness and a hyperconsciousness that it is going to need to “be viewed more than once” to work at all—one has to see what happens in order to go back and see what is happening. And with this aspect, it is conscious also of the fact that…well, that may well not happen, because, Art House to the nth, it flagrantly gives nothing but further cipher to point an audience back to its beginning (the final shot, before the abrupt cut, a return to the initial frame of the film, the character of Ryan directly turning to look straight down the barrel of the camera, expressionless, as though out at those in voyeuristic attendance to him—the abrupt cut itself, indeed, an indicator that “nothing here or further will help you understand: if understanding is your desire, you must go back”).

And secondly there is the absolute dishonesty in all central characters (save for perhaps Gina, though she is a kind of semi-foil, a false-match to Ryan who reveals himself ready to trade innocence for Tom Ripley head-games if it all comes down to it while she, in the face of seeing the truth, turns her “violence” inward, ready to degrade herself to “keep the movie going” if things break that way…a side point, though one I need to bring up on the periphery, here)—this dishonesty that is completely permeating to the point (and the film blunts this so we know) we must understand that the characters could not show honesty if they wanted to, as the elements necessary for such a thing exist neither internally nor externally to their environment. They have no perspective outside of their habitat—all tears are crocodile (remember: Tara cries for Ryan before he makes love to her—in perhaps the films only nearness to sex-as-balm or comfort moment—and cries just as much and with as much seeming earnestness for Christian before he coerces her into alibiing him for his killing); all betrayals are just the same as the simple misunderstandings they play-act (Christian confesses his worry that Tara is cheating on him while in bed after half-way fucking one of his many lovers, insisting he “cares…a lot” about Tara’s “infidelity” despite the couples sexual proclivities, but he takes his revelation of worry no further than to say it is there); all moments of victimization (between the leads) are entirely and with consideration agreed to, all parties victim and victimizer, complicitly and at once (Christian uses the sex acts with other couples as a control over Tara who, in turn, lets herself be used in order to, inside the same sex acts, exert control over Christian). There can be nothing but deceit in The Canyons because each character knows they, themselves, are lying (even Gina, in a sense, though this is more of a self-deceit by inaction, a wanton self-blinding) and so cannot proceed as though anyone else is not—each character sees themselves as centerpiece and so by default feels all parties around them must be behaving appropriately in reference to their perverse slant of centrality (in a sense, they all think they are in a movie and being analyzed, that “supporting characters” only mean things in relation to their “starring role”.)

The film (as both a script and the presentation of it visually) could be summed up, thusly: imagine an atom in which each electron thinks it is the nucleus, in which these figures swirl around each other, each imagining itself to be the still point around which the others go—and like with an electron cloud, our perception as audience is one of Heisenberg uncertainty: things only looks how they look when we select a point of focus, but, in fact, the charges we are observing are just as much nowhere as they are omnipresent as they are in the precise point we chose to make our regard from.

With The Canyons, the film experience is far more petri-dish than humanist (again, not surprising as Schrader once, in celebratory tones, exclaimed it to be “all ice and elbows”)—which is fitting and what Art Film is meant to be. For there is a certain solemnity in thinking of eyes peering down a microscope at a single dot of some fungus we all know is growing around us, a kind of dignity in thinking that specimen could well be looking straight back at us, patiently thinking “Yes, you’re right that I am mold, that I’m feeding on decay…but I’m also Penicillin, if you take care to figure out just what that means.”