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Burdens of Conscience: Three Auteurs Tackle Guilt and Grief in America

by Anthony Kaufman

This Friday marks a triple witching hour for American independent cinema with the release of three idiosyncratic visions from some of our country's foremost auteurs: David Gordon Green's "Snow Angels," Gus Van Sant's "Paranoid Park" and Ira Sachs's "Married Life."

Completely different films, completely different styles, completely different milieus, but each in its own way provides an example of the way in which films made outside of the mainstream can supply us with complex levels of satisfaction. And while these three disparate features couldn't be more different, beneath the surface, they all address death, accountability and compassion in these dark contemporary times.

David Gordon Green departs from the lyrical, meandering narratives of his previous efforts, "Undertow," "All the Real Girls" and "George Washington," with the seemingly straightforward "Snow Angels." Instead of the subjective world of teenagers, on the run, lost or morally confused, Green weaves together the tragic convergence of several characters, children and their parents, in a wintry North American town.

"Are you ready to be my sledgehammer?" The words, spoken sternly by a high-school bandleader to his students, are the last we hear before the sound of two gunshots brings the film's introduction to a close. While the teacher is talking about his band's slack musak rendering of Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer," the question presents a challenge to the audience, as well: Are you ready to take part in this bludgeoning story of loss? It's also the kind of oddball line, both comic and symbolic, that Green enjoys. Like much of the film that follows, there's a naturalistic surface that belies deeper, darker and stranger truths.

For example, the film's prologue includes a series of everyday shots of this Anywhere, U.S.A. town: a man filling up his gas tank; a couple of locals walking down a main shopping strip; a simple matter-of-factness that defines an ordinary way of life. But the montage returns towards the end of the film, post-catastrophe, and what first appeared the essence of normality now looks naïve and deficient, forever touched by trauma.

Green gets a lot of mileage out of actor Sam Rockwell, whose suicidal fuck-up Glenn wears an awkward big-buckled belt, big slacks and a born-again devotion to Jesus Christ on his sleeves. Both funny and sad, Glenn could have easily veered towards caricature, but it's a testament to both Green and Rockwell that by the time the character goes off a horrible deep-end, he is still credible, watchable, and halfway sympathetic.

"Snow Angels" isn't perfect: some of the dialogue is overwritten and expository, and the film's sledgehammer of a finale leaves little room to breathe. But Green has an absorbing affection for all his characters (from teenage lovers Michael Angarano and Olivia Thirlby to Nicky Katt's amusingly laconic Jewish playboy nurse). There's also an unremitting commitment to the tale's gravity that few filmmakers would embrace. As one of the characters says, "People don't bring out cameras on sad days." David Gordon Green does.

And so does Gus Van Sant. "Paranoid Park," made in much the same painterly vein as his recent "Elephant" and "Last Days," chronicles the simple story of a young Portland skateboarder accidentally involved in a gruesome murder. Lushly photographed by cinematographer Christopher Doyle, evocatively sound designed by Leslie Schatz and told elliptically through flashbacks, "Park" plumbs the guilty conscience of his young feather-haired hero in a highly subjective style. Mixing a rich, otherworldly soundscape with lyrical slow-motion sequences and 70's style grainy skater footage, the film is a sumptuous experiential piece of cinema that is like nothing else in theaters. But just as it is beautiful, the film is also suffused with the topical paranoia of his protagonist -- a young man who refuses to take responsibility for killing.

Like "Snow Angels," "Paranoid Park" pivots around a random death that throws the characters into further chaos. Once-established relationships disintegrate, while vague or troubled relationships coalesce. And the ways in which the characters respond to death, either in denying it or causing more carnage to atone for it, reveals a larger cultural dysfunction about grief and guilt. In their bloody tales of heavy consciences, both films are unmistakably wrapped up in cataclysm, its effects, and what we must do to heal. Don't bottle it up, suggests a mother to her son in "Snow Angels."

To say whether a murder is actually committed in "Married Life," Ira Sachs' darkly comic chamber-piece set in late-1940s America, would be unfair to the suspenseful pleasures of the film. But suffice to say that this deceptively light story about a man who wants to kill his wife to spare her the pain of a divorce unearths more serious tensions about human understanding and communication--and our lack of both. Ultimately, the most optimistic of the three films, "Married Life" observes mild-mannered middle-aged businessman Harry (Chris Cooper) as he hatches the perfect murder plot in order to consummate his love for a younger woman.

If Green's milieu is Gothic realist and Van Sant employs a dreamy impressionism, Sachs's style approaches a more traditional comedy-of-manners. But beneath its post-war American sheen, there is a similar stylization—not quite Todd Haynes' "Far from Heaven," but definitely a tricky mix of period-piece artifice and heartfelt emotion—that one doesn't find in standard Hollywood fare.

Like the others two films, "Married Life" is no traditional entertainment, and when it's affecting conclusion sneaks up on you, it comes as a minor revelation. All this witty banter and all these plot twists actually convey a serious message that ultimately lies below the surface of all three films: the notion that we must come to terms with our complicity in other people's pain, as well as our own.

People of good conscience, "Married Life" suggests, cannot allow for the suffering of others while they go ahead and smile through life. As the film's Machiavellian narrator repeats, "One can't build one's happiness on the unhappiness of others"—even though that's exactly what he–and many of us–do.

People of good conscience, "Married Life" suggests, cannot allow for the suffering of others while they go ahead and smile through life. It's an idealistic idea. You have to wonder what exactly prompted three very  different filmmakers to convey such a similar message right now. Could it be some long-gestating post-9/11 reflection, or a reaction to the Iraq war and its horrendous collateral damages, from Abu Ghraib and Haditha? Or is it a newfound understanding of globalization, that we are all interconnected and responsible for each other? Or is it simply the fact that in times of crisis, as the world looks today, "One can't build one's happiness on the unhappiness of others," as "Married Life's" Machiavellian narrator repeats—even though that's exactly what he, and many of us, do.

What's your opinion or answer to this question? Please post a comment and let's see how you see it.

 

Posted on 03/07/08 by: anthony 03:14 PM