Film nerds are into some esoteric shit. Maybe it’s because we subject ourselves to hundreds of movies a year and thus are inundated with recurrent clichés and tired formats, but we love films that play with the form, deconstruct it, and, in some cases, chew it up and spit it out. I think of Godard’s post-‘60s output, some of De Palma’s more experimental work, including Body Double (John Semley on Femme Fatale: “It’s not the character that’s dreaming; it’s the film”), or pictures whose enjoyment in part depends on a sort of palpable tension between their authors’ original intentions, their often troubled productions, and the resultant product (Adam Nayman on his beloved Showgirls: “Good filmmaking propping up bad screenwriting; a bad actress dragging down a good one—it’s all in plain view.”) These are films that are often inscrutable to regular paying audiences (not to mention most critics), who are not so devoted to the medium’s established formal practices to understand the ways they have been made playfully elastic, nor can they be reasonably expected to distinguish between intentional subversion and sheer ineptitude.
Which brings us, with the inevitability of the soul of a monkey being unable to survive the dimensional threshold, to Richard Kelly’s mid-noughties film maudit, Southland Tales. A Bush-era apocalyptic phantasmagoria, it has achieved cult status amongst a certain segment of cinephilia who revel in directors taking large swings, even—and perhaps especially—when they are ill-advised, and for whom concerns such as plot and things making sense are petty when compared to vibes and "pure cinema."* Speaking of plot, an earnest attempt at a brief synopsis: the film takes place within a dystopian Los Angeles in an alternate 2008, where a nuclear attack on America has allowed the surveillance state and police militarization to run rampant, and where the only opposition to this oppressive government regime is an underground Neo-Marxist movement (basically what some hysterical conservatives now imagine Antifa to be) run by a group of failed performance artists and comedians. The film follows three main characters, whose paths will cross and possibly bring about the end of the world: Boxer Santaros (Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson), an A-list action star with connections to the Republican party who has amnesia after a mysterious trip to the desert, and who has written a screenplay called “The Power” that, coincidentally enough, may also foretell the end of times; Krysta NOW (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a porn star turned would-be media magnate who may or may not have psychic powers but who is certainly manipulating Boxer to her own ends; and Roland Taverner, an Iraq war veteran (with an identical twin named Ronald) who is suffering from PTSD after an incident of friendly fire in which he accidentally disfigured his fellow soldier Pilot Abilene (Justin Timberlake, who serves as the film’s narrator cum Greek chorus).
"...after reading the novels, I finally understand the relationship between the three lead characters—and I have seen the film 4 times over the past 15 years."
Much of the plot of the film is unintelligible due to information that is willfully withheld by Kelly, as the Southland Tales story was originally conceived as a multimedia experience befitting its modern age (2006), including three prequel graphic novels and a then-state-of-the-art interactive website. Yet, after the film’s disastrous Cannes premiere, where it was hailed as one of the worst films to ever play the festival**, the movie and its accompanying novels were subject to an almost complete burial. It’s reasonable to assume that approximately 99% of first time viewers had no idea the graphic novels even existed, and likely took the film starting with Chapter IV as a cheeky, Star Wars-esque flourish. From a visual perspective, they didn’t miss much; the illustration of the Prequel Saga by Brett Weldele is disappointingly pedestrian for such a kaleidoscopic vision of the near-future, opting for muted colours and loose, sketchy line work, with a noir grittiness reminiscent of Frank Miller (I often found myself dreaming of an alternate version closer to the apocalyptic grandeur of Otomo’s Akira). And yet the plot contained within delivers essential story context, to the point that, after reading the novels, I finally understand the relationship between the three lead characters—and I have seen the film 4 times over the past 15 years. In this way, the novels seem less like additional reading for interested fans and more like a necessary prerequisite.
This is far from the only extra-textual element of the film, which extends to its own casting; even in 2006, headlining a film with the trifecta of The Rock***, Scott, and Gellar was essentially stunt casting, and the supporting players are populated by washed-up '80s movie stars and C-list SNL-alumni (including Christopher Lambert, Curtis Armstrong, Zelda Rubenstein, Jon Lovitz, & Cheri Oteri) like some kind of funhouse mirror reflection of a Quentin Tarantino cast. Kelly also wears his literary inspirations on his sleeve, incorporating lines from Robert Frost (“Two roads diverged in a wood…”) and T.S. Elliot (“This is the way the world ends…”), while doffing his cinephile cap to the similarly LA-set apocalyptic noir Kiss Me Deadly, which appears on a television in one scene. The writer/director also heavily features the song “All These Things That I Have Done” by The Killers, culminating in the movie’s centrepiece musical sequence. And those of us who spent our teenage years arguing with friends in parking lots and video store aisles that Donnie Darko served as a rough retelling of The Last Temptation of Christ had our attentions piqued by the many references to the Book of Revelation generously, and somewhat haphazardly, slathered over the film via voice over by a genuinely good Timberlake.
Yet the far more interesting metatext to consider when watching the movie is that of a lauded rookie director recklessly nuking all the goodwill he had accrued from the success of Donnie Darko on something so willfully abstruse and tonally unhinged. Though the earlier film was a box office failure, it grew a cult following thanks to home video, and there was a short time when Richard Kelly was seen as The Next Great American Filmmaker. But while Darko had the ballast of an extremely likeable protagonist and a relatable setting to anchor its arcane lore, Southland Tales is comparatively unmoored. Darko had an immersive intimacy, but Southland’s hypertextual references, self-reflexive casting choices, and juvenile humour that seemed completely at odds with the severity of its themes lead to a fragmented experience that kept a lot of viewers at a Brechtian distance.
"...if the film can be reasonably lauded as a success, it might be for this almost heroic lack of regard for normal convention."
And if the film can be reasonably lauded as a success, it might be for this almost heroic lack of regard for normal convention (to quote Letterboxd user comrade_yui’s 1-star review: “this is like if Hideo Kojima directed a prequel to escape from LA and it was written by seth macfarlane.”) However it seems to me now that the extended universe and release strategy was a cart-before-the-horse move by Kelly, as he failed to create compelling characters that would populate this world, not to mention a cohesive story that would fully justify this multimedia saga, a tragic flaw I have termed Lucas hubris. The film wants to be a Magnolia-like sprawling LA-set sophomore epic, except Kelly doesn’t have the visual sophistication of a young PTA,**** with almost wall-to-wall pedestrian blocking and flat compositions—though it is fair to ask how much of this is Kelly and his DP deliberately evoking a reality show drabness as an ironic backdrop to this tale of end of days. And while often hysterically funny, the characters aren't complex, coming across as mere cardboard cutouts with Pynchon-lite names (Fortunio Balducci, Baron von Westphalen, Starla von Luft).
Regarding the graphic novels, it seems reasonable to ask two questions: Does the additional context afforded from these comics make the movie itself more enjoyable, and are they worth reading on their own merit? To the first question, I must unfortunately say no. Grasping the full story certainly makes the movie more coherent, and yet the more legible the film and the more the mystery is unravelled, the less interesting it ultimately becomes. Like Donnie Darko, Southland Tales is better at asking questions than providing answers, but that earlier film’s strength was hinting towards some greater mystery that would connect everything together, but which was always kept tantalisingly out of reach. Southland Tales offers too much yet still not enough.
"Southland Tales offers too much yet still, somehow, not enough."
As to whether or not the graphic novels are worth reading for fans of the movie, I would, perhaps contradictorily, say yes; because for all its myriad problems and my inability to fully recommend the film, I must say I have nevertheless enjoyed inhabiting the world Kelly has devised for us, and I would never for a moment discourage you from experiencing it for yourself. And this is just the type of contradiction that keeps the film so interesting after all these years. While the film fumbles on a plot and character level almost completely, in his attempt to make the Great American Movie, Kelly ended up with an objet d’art as messy, divisive, irrational, and often inexplicable as modern life itself. If it fit together better, if it were less gaudy, would it still feel so quintessentially American? You could say it’s a sort of cosmic gumbo of half-baked ideas. And as a film nerd, I love that shit.
* lest this come across as scolding, I must admit I count myself as one of these soldiers of cinema
**Roger Ebert summed up the sentiments of many critics with his assessment: “Did [Kelly’s] editor ever suggest that he might emerge with a more coherent product if he fed the footage through a revolving fan and spliced it together at random?”
***In retrospect, casting The Rock as an A-list action star with political ambitions seems to be one of the most unintentionally prophetic elements of the film
**** even though PTA was at that point in his career basically just concocting cinematic simple syrup—recipe: mix Scorsese and Altman in equal parts– and, as my editor pointed out, PTA likely could not have written “Teen Horniness is Not a Crime”
Film nerds are into some esoteric shit. Maybe it’s because we subject ourselves to hundreds of movies a year and thus are inundated with recurrent clichés and tired formats, but we love films that play with the form, deconstruct it, and, in some cases, chew it up and spit it out. I think of Godard’s post-‘60s output, some of De Palma’s more experimental work, including Body Double (John Semley on Femme Fatale: “It’s not the character that’s dreaming; it’s the film”), or pictures whose enjoyment in part depends on a sort of palpable tension between their authors’ original intentions, their often troubled productions, and the resultant product (Adam Nayman on his beloved Showgirls: “Good filmmaking propping up bad screenwriting; a bad actress dragging down a good one—it’s all in plain view.”) These are films that are often inscrutable to regular paying audiences (not to mention most critics), who are not so devoted to the medium’s established formal practices to understand the ways they have been made playfully elastic, nor can they be reasonably expected to distinguish between intentional subversion and sheer ineptitude.
Which brings us, with the inevitability of the soul of a monkey being unable to survive the dimensional threshold, to Richard Kelly’s mid-noughties film maudit, Southland Tales. A Bush-era apocalyptic phantasmagoria, it has achieved cult status amongst a certain segment of cinephilia who revel in directors taking large swings, even—and perhaps especially—when they are ill-advised, and for whom concerns such as plot and things making sense are petty when compared to vibes and "pure cinema."* Speaking of plot, an earnest attempt at a brief synopsis: the film takes place within a dystopian Los Angeles in an alternate 2008, where a nuclear attack on America has allowed the surveillance state and police militarization to run rampant, and where the only opposition to this oppressive government regime is an underground Neo-Marxist movement (basically what some hysterical conservatives now imagine Antifa to be) run by a group of failed performance artists and comedians. The film follows three main characters, whose paths will cross and possibly bring about the end of the world: Boxer Santaros (Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson), an A-list action star with connections to the Republican party who has amnesia after a mysterious trip to the desert, and who has written a screenplay called “The Power” that, coincidentally enough, may also foretell the end of times; Krysta NOW (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a porn star turned would-be media magnate who may or may not have psychic powers but who is certainly manipulating Boxer to her own ends; and Roland Taverner, an Iraq war veteran (with an identical twin named Ronald) who is suffering from PTSD after an incident of friendly fire in which he accidentally disfigured his fellow soldier Pilot Abilene (Justin Timberlake, who serves as the film’s narrator cum Greek chorus).
"...after reading the novels, I finally understand the relationship between the three lead characters—and I have seen the film 4 times over the past 15 years."
Much of the plot of the film is unintelligible due to information that is willfully withheld by Kelly, as the Southland Tales story was originally conceived as a multimedia experience befitting its modern age (2006), including three prequel graphic novels and a then-state-of-the-art interactive website. Yet, after the film’s disastrous Cannes premiere, where it was hailed as one of the worst films to ever play the festival**, the movie and its accompanying novels were subject to an almost complete burial. It’s reasonable to assume that approximately 99% of first time viewers had no idea the graphic novels even existed, and likely took the film starting with Chapter IV as a cheeky, Star Wars-esque flourish. From a visual perspective, they didn’t miss much; the illustration of the Prequel Saga by Brett Weldele is disappointingly pedestrian for such a kaleidoscopic vision of the near-future, opting for muted colours and loose, sketchy line work, with a noir grittiness reminiscent of Frank Miller (I often found myself dreaming of an alternate version closer to the apocalyptic grandeur of Otomo’s Akira). And yet the plot contained within delivers essential story context, to the point that, after reading the novels, I finally understand the relationship between the three lead characters—and I have seen the film 4 times over the past 15 years. In this way, the novels seem less like additional reading for interested fans and more like a necessary prerequisite.
This is far from the only extra-textual element of the film, which extends to its own casting; even in 2006, headlining a film with the trifecta of The Rock***, Scott, and Gellar was essentially stunt casting, and the supporting players are populated by washed-up '80s movie stars and C-list SNL-alumni (including Christopher Lambert, Curtis Armstrong, Zelda Rubenstein, Jon Lovitz, & Cheri Oteri) like some kind of funhouse mirror reflection of a Quentin Tarantino cast. Kelly also wears his literary inspirations on his sleeve, incorporating lines from Robert Frost (“Two roads diverged in a wood…”) and T.S. Elliot (“This is the way the world ends…”), while doffing his cinephile cap to the similarly LA-set apocalyptic noir Kiss Me Deadly, which appears on a television in one scene. The writer/director also heavily features the song “All These Things That I Have Done” by The Killers, culminating in the movie’s centrepiece musical sequence. And those of us who spent our teenage years arguing with friends in parking lots and video store aisles that Donnie Darko served as a rough retelling of The Last Temptation of Christ had our attentions piqued by the many references to the Book of Revelation generously, and somewhat haphazardly, slathered over the film via voice over by a genuinely good Timberlake.
Yet the far more interesting metatext to consider when watching the movie is that of a lauded rookie director recklessly nuking all the goodwill he had accrued from the success of Donnie Darko on something so willfully abstruse and tonally unhinged. Though the earlier film was a box office failure, it grew a cult following thanks to home video, and there was a short time when Richard Kelly was seen as The Next Great American Filmmaker. But while Darko had the ballast of an extremely likeable protagonist and a relatable setting to anchor its arcane lore, Southland Tales is comparatively unmoored. Darko had an immersive intimacy, but Southland’s hypertextual references, self-reflexive casting choices, and juvenile humour that seemed completely at odds with the severity of its themes lead to a fragmented experience that kept a lot of viewers at a Brechtian distance.
"...if the film can be reasonably lauded as a success, it might be for this almost heroic lack of regard for normal convention."
And if the film can be reasonably lauded as a success, it might be for this almost heroic lack of regard for normal convention (to quote Letterboxd user comrade_yui’s 1-star review: “this is like if Hideo Kojima directed a prequel to escape from LA and it was written by seth macfarlane.”) However it seems to me now that the extended universe and release strategy was a cart-before-the-horse move by Kelly, as he failed to create compelling characters that would populate this world, not to mention a cohesive story that would fully justify this multimedia saga, a tragic flaw I have termed Lucas hubris. The film wants to be a Magnolia-like sprawling LA-set sophomore epic, except Kelly doesn’t have the visual sophistication of a young PTA,**** with almost wall-to-wall pedestrian blocking and flat compositions—though it is fair to ask how much of this is Kelly and his DP deliberately evoking a reality show drabness as an ironic backdrop to this tale of end of days. And while often hysterically funny, the characters aren't complex, coming across as mere cardboard cutouts with Pynchon-lite names (Fortunio Balducci, Baron von Westphalen, Starla von Luft).
Regarding the graphic novels, it seems reasonable to ask two questions: Does the additional context afforded from these comics make the movie itself more enjoyable, and are they worth reading on their own merit? To the first question, I must unfortunately say no. Grasping the full story certainly makes the movie more coherent, and yet the more legible the film and the more the mystery is unravelled, the less interesting it ultimately becomes. Like Donnie Darko, Southland Tales is better at asking questions than providing answers, but that earlier film’s strength was hinting towards some greater mystery that would connect everything together, but which was always kept tantalisingly out of reach. Southland Tales offers too much yet still not enough.
"Southland Tales offers too much yet still, somehow, not enough."
As to whether or not the graphic novels are worth reading for fans of the movie, I would, perhaps contradictorily, say yes; because for all its myriad problems and my inability to fully recommend the film, I must say I have nevertheless enjoyed inhabiting the world Kelly has devised for us, and I would never for a moment discourage you from experiencing it for yourself. And this is just the type of contradiction that keeps the film so interesting after all these years. While the film fumbles on a plot and character level almost completely, in his attempt to make the Great American Movie, Kelly ended up with an objet d’art as messy, divisive, irrational, and often inexplicable as modern life itself. If it fit together better, if it were less gaudy, would it still feel so quintessentially American? You could say it’s a sort of cosmic gumbo of half-baked ideas. And as a film nerd, I love that shit.
* lest this come across as scolding, I must admit I count myself as one of these soldiers of cinema
**Roger Ebert summed up the sentiments of many critics with his assessment: “Did [Kelly’s] editor ever suggest that he might emerge with a more coherent product if he fed the footage through a revolving fan and spliced it together at random?”
***In retrospect, casting The Rock as an A-list action star with political ambitions seems to be one of the most unintentionally prophetic elements of the film
**** even though PTA was at that point in his career basically just concocting cinematic simple syrup—recipe: mix Scorsese and Altman in equal parts– and, as my editor pointed out, PTA likely could not have written “Teen Horniness is Not a Crime”