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Every once and a while, an American film surfaces from nowhere and captures the complete aura of that time in our society. In the 50s, it can easily be pointed at a film called Rebel without a Cause in which James Dean and his red wind jacket became the symbol of teenagers everywhere who felt smothered by their parents’ old-fashioned norms. The outcome of this rebellious nature can be seen in the 60s, when Bonnie and Clyde showed us the fearlessness in expressing one’s self and The Graduate showed us that the next generation feels just as much smothered as the previous – and by those who share the same feelings of entrapment. That’s when Easy Rider came along and spoke volumes. Throughout the next many years we had such products of their time as ranging from social commentaries like The French Connection and Cruising to teen-spirit pictures such as The Breakfast Club and Clueless. Now that we have exited the aught-period, we have yet to really name off the film that captured what our society was like. Some would say The Social Network which, yes, I guess it captures our current technological socializing. But following the events of September 11, 2001 and leading up to the high-level possibility of terrorism and the high-speed upgrading of technology and in-your-face consumerism, I can’t think of a better film to capture our chaotic and fear-filled mindset of the past ten years better than Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales.

Say what? Yeah, I know. It’s a film about starring “The Rock” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and was met with scorn by the audiences at the Cannes Film Festival. Follow that up with a wave of spiteful reviews (although a very small ounce of high positives) from mainstream critics. Let’s also add onto the fire with the fact that the film flopped miserably at the box office. To put it simply, things were looking absolutely terrible for director Kelly after coming off his high-wave of praise and cult status for his directorial debut Donnie Darko five years prior. It’s frequently intriguing looking at how the reception of Southland Tales seems to almost always be very high on the positive side or very low on the negative. In a way, it has found its own cult following of a different vein compared to Kelly’s first film. It’s unheard of, but Kelly kind of achieved it. Twice. In a row.

Southland Tales’ blatant originality is composed of how it so dutifully blends so many genres and themes together while balancing morals, twists, turns, and confusions into a seizure of the bizarre. It makes sense why it managed to spin around so many heads on a virginal viewing, just as much as it makes it quite difficult for many to finish watching it. The thing is, though, throughout all this clutter and debris of seeming randomness, everything does, in fact, fall together in the end; only it all comes together with multiple viewings and slowly piecing together every strand of its myriad of plot points. When you grasp onto Kelly’s labyrinth of intentions, Southland Tales not only makes sense all the way through – it also becomes much a film much easier to watch. Not to mention, more enjoyable.

When it comes to atmosphere and mood, Southland Tales is thoroughly off-kilter compared to Kelly’s Donnie Darko, as wello as any kind of mainstream American film in recent memory. The only thing the picture comes close to recalling is Jean-Luc Godard, which Southland Tales proudly shares its marriage of sound and visuals alongside political and social commentary with. However Godardian it may be, however, it still grasps onto its own feeling and its own taste of atmosphere. Nothing comes close to sharing the film‘s palette of style, not even Kelly’s first film.

Not to say Donnie Darko didn’t hold onto moods of its own, as it did through coming-of-age drama mixed with spots of humor, science fiction, fantasy, and horror. And it really is a great film, and very accessible as its status now proves. Southland Tales is its own breed, though. A full-blown satirical melodrama fueled with both campy and sitcom-like dialogue. It’s also got an unconventionally eyebrow-raising cast seeming chosen at random as well as a self-aware and sometimes sexually perverse sense of humor and a chill-inducing attention to the structure of musical sequences. By breathing this out in a futuristic setting that is as dark and sinister as the very best utopias in science fiction and you have a collection of various subplots and characters crashing together to bring you a quirky version of how American arrived to its post-9/11 existence.

With the jagged edge of a tongue-in-cheek blade, Kelly clashes and contrasts an assortment of different emotions and responses thereof. Southland Tales uses all it can to give off the messages it feels important to tell and does so by projecting it all in any way it can; whether it being of a political, scientific, philosophical or even spiritual kind. Kelly interestingly casts his characters with actors who seem to play patterns based off their actual celebrity images. They never take their parts seriously and are always seemingly aware that they should not be taking the proceedings as anything but on a level of humor. So, we have an action movie star being played by an action movie star and he does it with an incredibly goofy level of slapstick and emotional humor. Such humor is ever present in the film, even if sometimes unbelievably quirky and strange, but the bottom of many scenes throughout the film is of a darker and twisted variety. Seeing how Kelly has this all leak from the pores of such well-constructed comedy helps bring forth that queasy feeling that Southland Tales creates. Why aren’t these characters treating their state of being seriously? Then again, why isn’t our society treating our country’s state of mind seriously?

Pick any scene or moment from the film and you can embrace and laugh at its humor all while embracing the undercurrent of heartbreak and drama that exists at its very core. The best example of Kelly’s canvas is the infamous musical sequence toward the end of the second act of the picture. Justin Timberlake’s character, a man who watches for violence on the streets of Los Angeles with a gun in hand, has been assigned to this government-forced job after being injured during friendly fire in the Iraq war. Due to these chain of events, the character, whose name is Pilot, no longer exists as the well-known actor and singer that he once was before the draft. Pilot spends his life watching the beaches and streets of the city by day while dealing the film’s fictional Fluid Karma drug by night. After taking some of the drug, Pilot enters into a dream state and finds himself in a world that bleeds together his multiple emotional fears and regrets.

This scene could have been constructed a number of ways using the templates of many old-fashioned layouts of dream and nightmare sequences, but Kelly goes beyond that and dishes out his own recipe. This three-minute fantasy sequences shows Pilot wearing a blood-stained shirt and drinking a beer, lip-syncing “All These Things That I’ve Done” by The Killers while looking directly into the camera at the audience. The way Kelly layers this moment with American iconography with reminders of war ranging from the aforementioned blood-stained shirt, the various American flags planted in the background, and the Marilyn Monroe-centric back-up dancers wearing nurse uniforms. The political and social evaluating is literally bleeding on the screen, and the way it all connects to the character of Pilot is on an equal level of genius. Kelly casting the real actor/singer Justin Timberlake in the role of a character who lip-syncs another artist’s song? Symbolically, this stroke of brilliance helps illustrate how the character has been robbed of his own voice both as a has-been celebrity and as a has-been American soldier. This is the very kind of layering that goes on throughout the entire film as Kelly reminds us over and over again about our very culture.

This layering that Kelly fuels his film on is what makes the overall depth of the film have its own spunk, as well. On the surface, Kelly likes to insert artistic homage and nods to multiple arts that he has personally responded to. Many examples include the film’s use of music – which ranges from contemporary rock to bubblegum pop to an original score by Moby that is beautiful in its melancholy. Kelly also pays complete tribute to the cinema by reconstructing multiple moments from the classic film noir Kiss Me Deadly, as well as the dreamlike mystique that lives in David Lynch’s masterpiece Mulholland Drive. A scene in which an important character falls into a dumpster filled with movie posters is another highlight of this voyeur viewpoint. By basing the film‘s main apocalyptic plot on the Christian book of Revelation, each character ties into a parabolic story that helps bring the film home in arriving at its spiritual place. It’s a beautiful way for Kelly to ask for society’s eyes to open and ditch its denial that everything will eventually come to an end.

Southland Tales is a very colorful assembly of many things that spill from the mind of someone as cryptic and hyperactive as Richard Kelly. When I first watched the film, I felt as most of the critics who reviewed the film upon its original release. I was confused by what I saw and I grew incredibly angry at it as well. Hell, I would even add that I was quite bored with it and felt cheated because nothing made a lick of sense. In short, I fucking hated it with a passion. On a second viewing, though, I began to feel there was something there – and on the many viewing following that, I started to slowly pull it all together and it all became clear to me. With his beautiful attention to his own ambition and his showcase for social commentary, Kelly crafted a film that miraculously manages to both tickle your funny bones and still move you to tears. It’s the defining film of our generation, no matter how much you hate it.

It’s….it’s so CHAOTIC! In coherence and continuity….but oh, what CHAOS! What ridiculous anarchy that is so all-over-the-map, so scatalogical, and so….dense, that it becomes a very fascinating and, ultimately, enjoyable film.
Being one who had not seen Donnie Darko, the debut film of Richard Kelly, I approached this with no expectations, no information on what it was about; needless to say, it was the fastest two and a half hours in my life. And i admit it, I loved every minute of it.
Call me sick, stupid, or downright masochistic, this was far from being a painful experience. There have been far worse movies than this and those often get more praise than they deserve, but I won’t drop names because this is about Southland Tales, right? One of the most “disastrous, cinematic train wrecks” Roeper has ever seen, right? Reviled at cannes…..re-edited only to be subsequently panned….why am I telling you all this? To show you how much Kelly had to work to get this film released. That alone is a superhuman feat; the work and effort to put his faith in this movie, and his sincere attempt at an Epic patchwork collage of pop culture and americana earns my respect.
All that work…for a very few nods and mostly groans and cat-calls, dismissing it, hoping it will die and dissapear into obscurity….

Fools. Haven’t they ever heard of Criterion? But I digress. What ABOUT this movie anyway? Why is it a mess of a narrative?
First things first, when the director tells you beforehand that you must read several graphic novels to fill in a giant chunk of backstory, THEN watch the film, you know right off the back you can kiss coherence goodbye. Then all that’s left is complete absorption into the film’s mad world. And believe me, it’s mad. A mad plot with a mad premise with mad characters, mad set-pieces and a mad narrator with too much time on his hands. And he’s not a soldier.

Anyway, set in the year 2008, it appears that after some TERRORIST NUCLEAR ATTACKS in Texas (of course), WWIII has begun. Basically the shit hits the fan and the country is in (implied) upheaval….but not in SUNNY CALIFORNIA!! Almost that is. That is not to say that it’s not entirely ignorant of the world’s problems. There are, after-all, the NEO-MARXISTS. A group of radicals with nothing better to do other than have porn channels and internet broadcasts of a sort of three-minute hate of the government. But let’s face it, they’re no match for the mighty power of…..wait for it….USIDENT!!!!!! insert fanfare here.
headed by the govenor’s wife (I don’t know, I don’t remember but it doesn’t matter at this point.) and sporting an EVILLLLLLL honeycomb hair-do and a southern drawl to boot, she reigns over the world in her white room, raiding people who she finds ‘subversive.’ This means killing them.
However, due to an upcoming election (the most dated part of the film; what, you don’t think a film can be dated in its own year? Try me…) USIDENT and other power-brokers are keen on retrieving a certain key to the puzzle: Boxer Santeros, played by Dwayne Johnson. You may remember him as THE ROCK but here he’s just Dwayne.
He’s an action movie star who vanished one day but then seemingly re-appeared in the border of Mexico. But then he was taken by a movie producer and a porn star(Sarah Michelle Gellar). These two clowns pretend to have depth but are generally don’t get it. It doesn’t matter, there’s TWINS!!! Sean William Scott plays the dual parts of twin brothers Officer Taverner and….officer Taverner. But are they twins? Why are they acting so odd? Anyway, one is a fascist pig. The other, a member of the Neo-Marxists. And they kidnap one and replace the other. The pseudo Taverner then visits Boxer, who is now going cuckoo with delusions of an epic crime saga screenplay, called THE POWER. In about two minutes, summarizing his script with delightful mad glee (Johnson is surprisingly wonderful), the movie’s following events are foreshadowed. I’ve lost track of most of the characters….you’ll have to excuse me.

So the Neo-Marxists plan on making a fake murder of two people who happen to be celebrities, because they think that this will create enough anger within the people that the city will erupt in violence. But a few nicks in the plan prevent everything from going exactly as planned; did I mention that there’s a mad scientist who hopes to control the world with LIQUID KARMA!!????
I didn’t? oh dear, because it’s also important but then again it’s not important. Nothing in this movie really is. It all serves one purpose: to get to that FINAL SCENE which is positively brilliant.
So you can forgive the excesses, the random plot digressions; hey, it manages to convey an epic sweep at least. Because of this, it takes on a unique mis-en-scene: tinsel, flags, pristine neighborhoods and bums, graffiti and culture side by side. It’s quite interesting and I wish that this exaggerated vision of Americana was on screen more often.

Did I mention Justin Timberlake was in this movie? No? Oops. he’s not integral but his presence in known throughout. Maybe it’s because he’s the narrator of the film….well, I suppose you ought to know SOMETHING about him. You see, he’s an Iraq war veteran and seems to reign over the city in a giant gun. He sees all and therefore he is our guide through this mad funhouse. But you realize that he’s mad too…I mean, he cosntantly quotes biblical verse, poetry, lyrics, stream of consciousness dialogue and finally, in a delightful turn, sings a musical number while high on LIQUID KARMA. did you get all that? Good.

It’s easy to see why most people would not like this movie….at all. It seems to be earnest, but then again, it is not. It seems like a comedy, but then again, it is not that funny, but then again, it IS pretty funny. (“Scientists are saying the future is going to be far more futuristic than they originally predicted.”) the Film is full of non-sequitirs in every department. To me, that is why it works most of the time.
It’s clear Kelly was going for a sort of Down-the-rabbit-hole sense of Comic book reality. It almost works but what’s holding it down? The answer is quite simple really: money.

The film simply doesn’t have enough big scenes. The special effects are just passable, the riots just glimpsed, the epic tapestry held back by its own budget constraints. It’s known that Kelly struggled to get funding and production money; in fact, had he the money and time to get Bigger sequences and bigger sets, it might’ve become the giant spectacular apocalyptic saga he wanted.
It’s really sad; it may be his second film, but what a second film! And for a young filmmaker to be so ambitious….perhaps the time was not right. Only someone so young could do something so ambitiously insane. It’s like Novecento by Bertolucci or the adaptation of War and Peace into an epic eight hour movie. People could argue that those filmmakers were of infinitely higher caliber. This may be true. But let’s face it, Southland Tales is just as ambitious and sincere.

I’m placing my bet on criterion or some other company to suddenly proclaim this a cult classic because that’s what it is. Twenty years from now it will be seen as both a time capsule of an era and a sort of noble folly that tried to fly but ultimatly, died and fell very, very….far.

Props to that random Asian woman who randomly shows up once in a while in the film….she really has a presence even if you’re not entirely clear what the hell she does. Then again, everybody kind of shows up for no apparent reason.
oh well…. “The fourth dimension is collasping on itself…..you stupid bitch.”

1. Toda persona que se enfrenta a la tarea de escribir algo relacionado con “Southland Tales” empieza su texto con la frase “es muy difícil decir algo sobre “Southland Tales””. Es que realmente se trata de una tarea con un alto grado de dificultad, que ya se intuye desde que los primeros minutos del film comienza a aparecer en pantalla. La segunda película de Richard Kelly es un caos hecho narración, es indescriptible, es imposible enfrentarse a ella sin perderse, sin marearse, sin que le falte a uno la respiración de lo asfixiado que se siente en medio de tanta explosión, de tanto pop-icon dando vueltas por ahí, de tantas tramas que van y vienen, de la metafísica, de la guerra, de la Internet, de la representación fílmica misma, de la sociedad individualista, del marxismo, de “Saturday Night Live”, en medio de tanto personaje, de tanta música, de los Pixies, de home movies, de armas, de Marxismo, de John Carpenter, de Kevin Smith, de “Donnie Darko”, de Justin Timberlake y todas esas cosas que Kelly pone en su película como una manera de decir “miren, este es el mundo que les espera”. Por eso es que “Southland Tales” es una película difícil.

2. Ahora bien, ¿es efectivo todo ese rejunte de cosas? Por momentos, si. La película, que Kelly mismo define como una comedia, en realidad no tiene mucho de eso, sino mas bien que se inscribe perfectamente en un relato de ciencia ficción pero que todo el tiempo esta tratando de escaparse de esa etiqueta. Eso en si no es algo malo, pero lo que pasa es que el movimiento constante, ese devenir casi imparable que tiene su película termina por marear al espectador que, después de media hora, básicamente le es imposible entender qué diablos esta pasando en una película que empezó con una explosión nuclear y que ahora tiene a un grupo de guerrilleros que se hacen llamar “Neo-Marxistas” y que esta compuesta por personajes salidos directamente de “Saturday Night Live”. La conexión, que obviamente tarda en llegar, recién casi al final del film, es algo que, a esa altura, ya casi no importa porque el espectador ya ha optado por dos opciones, muy contrarias una de la otra: o bien decidió dejar de ver la película para ocuparse de otros asuntos mas, digamos, importantes en su vida diaria o, por el otro lado, se metió de lleno en una película que es, por lejos, lo mas anárquico que haya salido de Hollywood en mucho tiempo y no hizo mas que disfrutar de la demencia visual de ese bicho raro que es Kelly y dejar que las cosas importantes o se hagan solas o directamente no se hagan. Las dos son opciones igualmente válidas. Las dos son las posibilidades que nos deja una película que parece inabarcable, de construcción indudablemente épica, extrema, que sobresale en la historia del cine contemporáneo por lo anómala que es. Y, créanme que, por mas que, repito, es inexplicable poner en palabras lo que es esta película, si hay algo que tengo seguro es que se trata de una anomalía cinematográfica, una especie de enfermedad que, bien recibida, da lugar a experiencias irrepetibles en el marco de esa extraña actividad que llamamos “mirar películas”.

3. Es inevitable pensar que, en medio de todo ese caos que es “Southland Tales”, la idea que Kelly tenia con su película es la de dar cuenta de buena parte de todos los males que América (y por consecuencia económica y cultural, el resto del mundo) puede llegar a sufrir si es que no cambia su forma de ver ciertas cosas. Es básicamente una película totalmente anti Bush y decir esto es, si, una afirmación ramplona, pero no por eso un detalle a ser tenido menos en cuenta. Se trata de una de las películas más radicalmente políticas que haya visto en mucho tiempo, y lo original de la misma esta incorporado no a la forma en la cual Kelly narra todo este lío que el mundo en el año 2008, sino en la coherencia con la cual lo hace. Si, es raro hablar de coherencia sobre una película de la que párrafos mas arriba había dicho que es, sencillamente, inentendible. Pero es que el estado actual de las cosas también lo es. Y si Kelly se dispone a hablar de eso, es entendible que lo haga de esta forma: mediante esta “cosa” que lejos esta de ser una simple película de acción, una simple película para reírse, una simple películas de aventura. No, nada de eso. Es una película que no se puede inscribir en ningún lado, que el mismo Kelly parece estar riéndose en nuestra propia cara cuando dice que “es una comedia”. Pero, si lo piensan bien, algo de razón hay en su afirmación: hay reírse en medio del fin del mundo, porque, después de eso, ya esta, no hay mas nada. Hay que reírse de todo este caos porque es lo único que lo puede hacer más llevadero. Hay que reírse porque el mundo ya se acaba y mas vale que lo hagamos, porque si no muy poco de todo esto va a tener sentido. Todo se esta yendo al carajo y no hay mas remedio que cagarse de risa. Ahí esta la comedia que es “Southland Tales”. Ahí esta la gracia de esa obsesión que parece tener Kelly con la destrucción del mundo (que ya aparecía en la no menos apocalíptica “Donnie Darko”, su opera prima), ahí esta ese fin del mundo diario, esa ola de mutilación que viene, lentamente, cada día un poquito mas cerca, hacia nosotros. Una ola de mutilación hecha de la misma basura de la cual esta hecha su película: un cast horrendo, constituido con lo peores actores que se puedan ver en una película (por lo general, todos separados, aca, como para acentuar el código trash y llevar a un nuevo nivel la paciencia del espectador, todos juntos), lo mas estereotipado de la ciencia ficcion (desde Phllip K. Dick hasta esa idea Orwelliana del “gran hermano” que todo lo ve), lo que el publico siempre quiere ver (explosiones por todos lados, chicas lindas, estrellas porno, Timberlake cantando…), etc. “Southland Tales” es, entonces, la mejor prpuesta, podriamos decir incluso la única sino fuera por esa gran película (esta vez si una comedia, aunque tampoco estamos tan seguros), surgida un par de años despues llamada “Idiocracy”, que pintaba un mundo igual de caotico que el de Kelly, un par de años mas allá en el futuro, pero producto de, justamente, el vivir en una sociedad que nos mantiene idiotizados constamente por el consumo de distintos productos que se nos refriegan en la cara. “La idiocracia” era el titulo en español de la película de Mike Judge, “Las Horas perdidas” es el que le toco a la de Kelly.

4.Hay un elemento mas que brida coherencia a la quibombo de Kelly. Es el guión “The Power”, que se nombra reiteradas veces en la película y que se supone que cuenta la misma historia apocalíptica que, casi al final, se apodera de la misma. Esto es algo que no comprendí la primera vez que la vi, pero que lei en algún lado y me sirvió para atar algunos cabos. En un determinado momento, “Southland Tales” deja de ser “Southland Tales” para pasar a ser “The Power”. El guión que aparece en la película, y que se filtra por Internet haciendo un caos absoluto, porque mucha gente piensa que eso que dice el guión es lo que en realidad va a pasar, se convierte en el protagonista total de la película de Kelly. Lo que presenciamos desde ese momento es “The Power”. Lo que cuenta “Southland Tales” es el guión que la actriz pornográfica y el actor de películas de acción idearon juntos. Es decir que, en definitiva, si uno se apega a esta cuestión, “Southland Tales” en realidad es todo el tiempo coherente con su estructura. Lo que pasa es solamente un raro de caso de usurpación cinematográfica. Un guión dentro de una película se apropia de la misma. Es como algo que germina de a poco y que, de repente, se convierte en una planta carnívora imposible de parar. Encima, “The power” parece ser una película mas que la industria nos tiene preparada. Una del montón. Incoherente, con malos actores, impresentable, llena de efectos especiales, explicaciones estupidas, pochoclera y que para lo único que sirve es para “pasar un buen rato”. “Southland Tales”, al contrario de buena parte de las “películas de la industria”, si bien sale de la misma maquinaria, sale mal, sale deformada, sale con ganas de escupir, de pegar, de mover los pilares. Pero es tanto lo que quiere decir (aunque algunas de las que dice quedan en la cabeza y mucho, molestan) que termina siendo victima de su propio atentado. Es un kamikze. Kelly, despues de esto, parece que va a hacer una película un poco mas de género, mas tranquila. Esperemos que, de todas maneras, sea muy difícil hablar de ella.

A colossal mess that is far more intriguing and entertaining than 99% of modern indie film. The sheer absurdity of the film, combined with the filmmaker’s brashness, is a refreshing middle finger to critics and Hollywood. Donnie Darko was Richard Kelly making a movie about the 1980s, the time period of his fondly remembered teens. Southland Tales was the movie that a teenage Richard Kelly would’ve made if he had been given millions of dollars AS a teenager in the eighties. Take this film too seriously at your own risk.