Flame War
by Steve Dollar 
This year's
SXSW Film Festival had not even officially begun before it delivered one of those experiences that justifies the entire trip to Austin, TX?where the effort to see the most amazing movies no one's ever heard of runs headlong into what amounts to spring break for the independent film (and music and interactive) industry. It was near the end of a pre-fest preview screening of a movie called
Bellflower. Terrible things, whose inevitable arrival in the story's arc had been suggested in its opening moments, were coming to pass. Once empathetic characters were turning into monsters. The edge of bat-shit crazy that had felt so exciting had tipped into psychosis. A heavy-set dude sitting next to me at the world-famous Alamo Drafthouse seemed to have been�enjoying himself until now. Then he began muttering under his breath: "Fuck ? what the fuck ? fuck it!" And, boom: He was outta there, reiterating his commentary at louder volume en route through the exit. �
I'd heard
Bellflower, which premiered at Sundance in January, was polarizing?always a bonus, especially in a festival film. But the angry departure begged a question: If you sat through everything else that happened in the last hour, why waltz in the final 15 minutes? �
Maybe that's testimony to the film's intensity and disorienting vibe. It's the feature debut of Evan Glodell, who also wrote the script and stars as Woodrow, a seemingly mellow guy who lives in a shitty Southern California suburb, not really appearing to do too much. He gets his jollies hanging with his best friend Aiden (Tyler Dawson), modifying junked automobiles into low-rent versions of tricked-out James Bond vehicles and fantasizing about their supercar: Medusa, a post-apocalyptic death machine in which they will cruise the desolation, obliterating any obstacle in their path. It's a geek's wet dream, the visualization of their inner Lord Humungous?the "warrior of the wasteland" from
The Road Warrior. The bromance never reaches a sexual climax, but the dudes go bang bang as often as they can. A typical amusement, which serves as an introduction to this berserk little world, finds the guys suspending a gasoline tank in some junkyard,� detonating it with shotgun blasts. Shocked that they somehow have failed to blow themselves up, they high-five it and declare, "Propane is for pussies." �
Woodrow's life takes a novel turn when he actually scores a date with a girl, a sassy wild card named Milly (Jessie Wiseman), after they meet-gnarly at a grasshopper-eating contest staged at the crappy local dive. Woodrow's shy nature is unsettled by Milly's gift for provocation. She's the dare he can?t refuse. Soon they're cruising for misadventure in "Speed Biscuit," Woodrow's jerry-rigged Volvo, complete with dashboard whiskey dispenser. �
Like they say, it's all fun and games until someone gets their eye put out. Or, in this case, busts out a homemade flamethrower. But for all its pyrotechnic, motorhead glee,
Bellflower is an impressively artful piece of work. Glodell spent the better part of three years making the film, working with a cast and crew of 11 and no money. He built the cars?including the super-charged Medusa itself, which he drove to Austin from Los Angeles?and he designed custom optical effects around the Silicon Imaging SI-2K Mini Digital Cinema camera. Those account for the film's unusual look. Some scenes appear to have been lensed through a biopsy slide, others use tilt focus to create a blurry effect as if shot with a leaky Holga camera. Manny Farber once described Godard's
Weekend as a movie in love with its own body odor. Glodell and his cinematographer Joel Hodge, have achieved something similar?and thrown in a hangover for good measure. The slacker dudes and dudettes who inhabit this cheap-beer demimonde hover lower on the food chain than the urban twentysomethings in your average mumblecore flick. They're prone to sudden brawling and desperate measures. They've got some trailer park in their blood. �
Glodell evokes all of this while suggesting elements of many other films, from
Two-Lane Blacktop to
Fight Club, with some of the brain-addled fog of
Memento. Yet the film's funky aura is entirely its own. Its unpredictable (and outrageous) dynamic heightens an emotional catastrophe born of a broken heart. Glodell said he wrote an early draft of the story after a bad breakup, taking literary revenge that was actually much more horrifying than what's depicted in the film. Its commentary on the transfiguring face of rage hits a raw nerve because he's made this world his own, daring the audience to come along for the ride. When bad things happen, the feelings are all too painfully mutual.
Posted by ahillis at March 12, 2011 10:28 AM
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