“Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you’re awake. He’s making sure you’re always distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed.” - Chuck Palahniuk
Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko had people talking endlessly trying to sort out the puzzle presented by a time rift of quasi-existential nature. In one interpretation, supported by the famous shot set to Gary Farmer’s rendition of “Mad World,” perhaps Donnie was a small-scale Christ figure, dying for all the suburban sinners of the 1980s. Maybe, maybe not.
Regardless, the lingering elements nearly a decade later, for me personally, with that film were the human touches: Jenna Malone waving to Mary MacDonnell in the closing shot. Drew Barrymore being fired from her job (for doing it with integrity) and howling in raw frustration, Holmes Osbourne worried that the insurance company might “fuck him on the shingle match” after part of their house is demolished. American Culture and kitsch played a minor yet resonating role: The Smurfs, Michael Dukakis, the Married with Children sitcom, and in particular SparkleMotion which saw 10 year old Daveigh Chase and her classmates make it to Ed McMahon’s Star Search by way of a highly sexualized dance routine to Duran Duran (or Pet Shop Boys depending on which version of the film you watch).
With Southland Tales, Kelly has upped the politics, kitsch imagery (Uncle Sam, porno, talk shows), religious noodling (here, Revelations) to a pitch that deafens all humanity out of the equation. Maybe that is his point, but much like Mike Judge’s Idiocracy, if you have a film which requires a world populated by crass imbeciles, you may just have shot yourself in the foot. Phillip K. Dick had to good sense to keep his people human, even as they were being slowly digested by the machine. In short, Kelly’s insistence on keeping things messy makes it awful hard to keep any honest-to-goodness emotion on the table. To say the narrative lacks focus, is an understatement of the highest order.
The two clear influences that I get out of Southland Tales are Mulholland Dr. and The Big Lebowski. This may just tell the tale, but it makes Kelly look like a poor imitator despite the film having some memorable imagery toward the end. If the first two hours were as good as the last half hour, and Kelly managed to merge some honest to goodness emotion into the plastic and glitter fabric he is weaving here, we just might have something. Bear with me here. Rebekah del Rio sings the National Anthem here as the apocalypse is at hand. This is not a nod to Mulholland Dr., this is firing the flare gun right between the eyes of that film. The scene in David Lynch’s film is one of my single favourite scenes in cinema, period; and it would be easy to hate on Kelly for appropriating it, but damn if the musical number with back-up violins and a gigantic American flag isn’t a doozy in its own right. At about this point, Southland Tales threatens to resonate, even if it is a little too little too late. Other surreal images, in particular, Orwellian office workers doing stretching exercises in USident’s computer farm or an SUV making sweet CGI love to another vehicle seem to stem from Kelly acting on instinct and subconscious, much like Lynch. He just isn’t that good at it yet and the thing ends up fragmented and overly reliant on voice-over - a lot like Dune actually (also a favourite!)
Furthermore, the smoky beer-soaked Justin Timberlake musical number in the centre of the film, caused by new-age drug and renewable energy source Liquid Karma (it’s hemp, only more sci-fi!), certainly brings to mind The Dude renting shoes from Saddam and teaching Brunehilde-Maude how to roll before being the ball himself. A certain sequence on a floating ice-cream truck above the lights of L.A. looks a lot like another Lebowski acid-flashback. The tableau of urban California, from Venice Beach to Malibu and everything in between seems to recall the Coen’s modus operandi in the Big Lebowski, although there appears to be no sign of either Karl Hungus fixing the cable, or Sam Elliot wandering in to explain things through the fourth wall.
So in the end, we are left with a zesty enterprise, signifying nothing other than the fact that US is going to hell in a hand-basket. Only in such a miasma of media saturation could a movie like Southland Tales be even possible. It is a bitter pill and we don’t have to like it, but there is no denying that it is a product of our times. Much like the business ambitions of porn-star-activist Krysta Now, namely to have a TV Show, pop album and an anthology of digital videos; Southland Tales has a dense website, three thick graphic novels, and the first of (likely) several editions of directors cuts and alternate version DVDs. I’m still waiting on that energy drink though - The Rock tells me that it is mighty tasty (its the electrolytes); but then who is to trust a schizophrenic movie star with political ties.