BELLFLOWER
***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Evan Glodell, Jessie Wiseman, Taylor Dawson, Rebekah Brandes
written and directed by Evan Glodell
THE CHANGE-UP
½*/****
starring Jason Bateman, Ryan Reynolds, Leslie Mann, Olivia Wilde
screenplay by Jon Lucas & Scott Moore
directed by David Dobkin
by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Bellflower earns the right to its melodrama by asking what you have to live for and, more importantly, what you're willing to do to keep your life uncomplicated. Woodrow (writer-director Evan Glodell) and Aiden (Taylor Dawson) don't seem to have much of a life beyond hanging out with their friends and drinking too much–but their minds were suitably "warped" by a second-generation VHS tape of Mad Max. Now they spend their days constructing flamethrowers and muscle cars destined to fit right in with that film's end-of-the-world milieu. Woodrow hooks up with a young woman named Milly (Jessie Wiseman), and as the relationship blossoms (and breaks down), Glodell takes the opportunity to explore the unfathomable guilt and anger that drove George Miller's original road warrior–as well as what Glodell's own heroes have failed to understand about his journey. When we first meet him, Woodrow doesn't know too much about guilt or anger, so his coping mechanisms are extremely fractured. Confrontations with others are typically brief, sometimes without logical end, and the director intentionally tones down most of the violence so that his characters can wallow in passive-aggressive detachment. Sometimes the violent images are chopped out entirely, only to be saved for later in the movie, where they may or may not have been mentally re-edited by Woodrow to conform to a more favorable outcome. That's the thing about the apocalypse: it never goes quite the way you want.
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Here's the other question that keeps Bellflower interesting: what would be the "favourable outcome" in a scenario that details heartbreak and the resultant bitterness in such explosive terms? The only thing you really know for sure is that the protagonists are guided by an overriding desire to live in a post-apocalyptic dreamscape where petty concerns like ex-girlfriends, bullying douchebags, and severe brain damage don't exist. (The film is often shot through a blinding yellow filter and/or filthy lens, implying that the world is perpetually two seconds away from nuclear holocaust.) They say as much in the movie itself, but still it doesn't fully prepare you for how eager these people are to see civilization collapse and the attendant responsibilities fade away. Successes and failures are imagined and re-enacted over and over again, though the end-goal is to make them all irrelevant. Woodrow and Aiden will live to become the kings of their own barren wasteland, even if they have to completely retreat from the human race before that time comes. Even if they have to build the bomb themselves.
For male bonding/slackerism in an unambiguous cultural apocalypse, let me direct your attention to David Dobkin's The Change-Up, which begins with an infant shitting in Jason Bateman's mouth and never gets any better from there. Exhausted family man Dave (Bateman) and wayward "actor" Mitch (Ryan Reynolds) simultaneously express their desire to change places while peeing into a fountain, and voilà!: Freaky Friday for the dudebro crowd, complete with all the gross-out humour and misdirected hate speech you expect from R-rated comedies these days, courtesy the screenwriters of The Hangover. Dave, having magically switched bodies with Mitch, naturally learns to better appreciate his wife (Leslie Mann), while Mitch gets his act together and wins the affection of his dad (Alan Arkin, looking understandably bewildered). For all the movie's rote predictability, however, the central pair are so poorly- and hastily-defined that Reynolds has barely had a chance to establish Mitch as immature before Bateman turns him into an unbelievable prick, and the actors are reduced to crude impersonations of each other's screen personae. (Meaning Bateman says "fuck" a lot and Reynolds stares blankly into space.) If The Change-Up weren't so depressingly unfunny, I suppose none of this would matter, or would at least matter less. Originally published: August 5, 2011.
THE BLU-RAY DISC - BELLFLOWER
by Bill Chambers Shot with a heavily-modified SI-2K (the camera Werner Herzog used on Cave of Forgotten Dreams), Bellflower, with its soft edges, hot whites, abyssal blacks, and sulphuric colours, provides almost an anti-HD experience, and these affectations only intensify as the film progresses. Fine detail is scarce, but that's clearly by design, as the dirt perpetually caking the lens is crisply defined. A single-use aesthetic devised by cinematography nerds, it uniquely conveys a private apocalypse, and something tells me the 2.35:1, 1080p transfer on this Blu-ray Disc is letter-faithful to the source. In accordance with the imagery, the soundmix becomes more experimental and non-diegetic as the movie wears on, but it's relatively conventional and packs a punch in 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. Music–Bellflower must have my second-favourite soundtrack this year after Drive (kindred spirits, both films make use of The Chromatics)–sounds rich, the LFE channel is used effectively to put a period on hollow displays of machismo, and the performances are elucidated by a crystalline dialogue track.
Extras begin with "Behind the Scenes of Bellflower" (23 mins., HD), which finds the cast and crew looking back on this labour of love from the vantage point of Sundance. Much of the piece is given over to the creation and implementation of the flamethrower, built by the filmmakers themselves using off-the-shelf plumbing parts from Home Depot. (Apparently at full throttle it could spray a distance of 70 feet.) While the shoot looks like it would have had nothing but hairy days, writer/director/star Evan Glodell–who caps this featurette by taking a big swig of whiskey, suggesting he may not entirely have absorbed the lessons of his own film–isolates a fraught encounter between his character and that of co-star Jessie Wiseman as the biggest challenge he personally faced. "Medusa Rundown" (10 mins., HD) sees Glodell showing off the Mad Max car and all its accoutrements; I never quite understood the reasoning behind the motor-oil finish, but that didn't stop me from salivating. A selection of "Outtakes" (8 mins., HD) hammers home the gonzo nature pf the production, as when Glodell sticks his fingers down his throat to induce vomiting, but it also shows an unexpected professionalism, as when Glodell rides a special mount to simulate a motorcycle crash. Bellflower's trailer (HD) plus HiDef previews for The Law, Terribly Happy, Beautiful Losers, Exit Through the Gift Shop, and Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale round out the platter, packaged in Oscilloscope's usual lavish gatefold along with a DVD version of Bellflower (unwatched by me and likely unwatchable). Originally published: November 14, 2011.
