Kritiken

It is a mess, certainly, but a fascinating, sometimes brilliant one, and necessary—a bizarre coalescence of influences and talents representative of and germane to the obsessions of its progenitors.

Possessing the same sly satirical bite as Paul Verhoeven'sShowgirls, Schrader's film is all the more effective for it being so closely tethered to real life... The film is an unabashed love poem to Lohan. Her performance is mesmerising, like a glitterball hanging in an abattoir.

But I think that there's something significant here beyond new ways to make and watch movies, and that is The Canyons' highlighting of the anti-spectacular as a model for what capitalism in America feels like right now. In fact, I'd argue that The Canyons is an important movie because it identifies how desperately many of us still want to believe that the larger-than-life, commodified good life is still available to us...

Paul Schrader directs an original screenplay by Bret Easton Ellis about shallow, sadistic Hollywood types. As one might expect of such a collaboration, the results are at once prurient and dour—it's one long wallow in the cesspool passed off as an act of moral indignation.

The restricted style and no-frills image, however, provide what may be the first truly great visualization of Bret Easton Ellis' writing, a reflection of wealth and comfort not as his strung-out and/or sadistic rich kids see it but as a nebulous realm of subjectivity between a passive observer and the biased inhabitants of Ellis' worlds. L.A. takes on the trappings of Twin Peaks, a broken mirror that reflects the warped, inviting image of the town and its grotesque, true self.

In some of the lighting and music cues, you can feel the movie straining to evoke doom and the ominous atmosphere and erotic saturation of David Lynch, who's an obvious point of reference (so, for me, were Henry Jaglom and Alan Rudolph). If Lynch specializes in movie-minded fun houses and sublimated waste, The Canyons is unsalvageable rubbish.

Transparency" is just another word for reflection, a narcissist's hall of mirrors. A culture of "reconnecting" and "keeping in touch" becomes a surveillance culture where, when being happy ceases to seem like an attainable goal, we settle for reassuring ourselves that no one else is any happier. It's true the movie is cold; true it's populated with self-serving dolts. So why, here [in the finale scene], is it suddenly so heartbreaking?

The Canyons is often a blunt and flaccid neo-thriller that wants to look and sound like a David Lynch film. But its juxtaposition of lifeless Hollywood scumbags with the rotting spaces puts an interesting spin on the way forms of exhibition (be it public or private) are changing in the age of YouTube, Netflix and iPhones. The intimacy once found in the classic theatrical viewing experience is now gone, replaced with something altogether emotionless, open and artificial.

it would be impossible for anyone with both a conscience and a wholly functional critical apparatus to find this attention-grabbing film more than marginally interesting, artful, or, least of all, shocking. We can give points, if to nothing else, to the cinematography, which evokes the deadened, shallow, decaying Hollywood we've come to expect from countless other films about that same microcosm.

Playing girlfriend Tara to rich "sick little boy" Christian (chilling, or just chilly, James Deen), Lindsay Lohan effectively alternates glaze and tears—with the odd spark—but the extrafilmic decay of her celebrity does not translate to star power and Marilyn-grade vulnerability.

At times the film achieves a quasi-Antonionism—and Schrader's direction is tight and focused—but the end game is as unfulfilling as the beginning. But that's the point. It would be tragic if it weren't all so pathetic.

Schrader has made it clear that she was a major pain in the ass to work with, often showing up late or not showing up at all... But he also said he'd work with Lohan again in a heartbeat, and that she still has a long career ahead of her if she can shake her reputation. Anyway, he added, a director can shoot around bad behavior, but not around a lack of charisma – and whether you view what she does in this movie as great acting or a public meltdown, it's riveting.