After only three movies, Heather and Andrew break down the career highs and lows of director Richard Kelly.
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| "I'm really not crazy. My eyes just look like that." |
Writer-director Richard Kelly burst out of
nowhere onto the film scene in 2001 with his cult favorite Donnie Darko and quickly earned the status of being the new
millenia’s David Lynch. Everything from
a merchandise chain to books theorizing what was between the lines in his first
feature were borne out of the young director’s newfound success. But somewhere along the way, Mr. Kelly’s luck
began to change with his follow-up features attempting to once again capture
the lightning in the bottle caught by Darko
as well as broadening his own cinematic horizons. Open to debate in terms of each picture’s
validity and place in the film world, The Movie Sleuth presents a unique focus
on the short lived film career of a budding surrealist and purveyor of pure
cinema.
Donnie
Darko (2001 – written and directed by Richard Kelly)
The film that put Richard Kelly on the
map, Donnie Darko is a crossbreed
between John Hughes, David Lynch and even a hint of Steven Spielberg. A high school oriented science fiction
fantasy that dances between surreal comedy and schizophrenic freakout, the film
concerns the titular teenage protagonist’s interior battle with what appear to
be either apocalyptic visions from the distant future or pure unadulterated
hallucinations. Designed as an ensemble
piece following Donnie’s (Jake Gyllenhaal) daily life as his bizarre
premonitions foretold by a demonic 6 foot tall bunny rabbit named Frank (Harvey anyone?) incite increasingly
destructive behavior from the teenage boy, Donnie
Darko feels like a coming of age high school comedy with a gothic edge to
the proceedings. What sets Donnie apart from other maladjusted
juvenile delinquents is that he actually wants to fulfill his thirst for
knowledge, a progressive and healthy contrast to his penchant to destroy.
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| "Uh yeah, I'm angsty. This flippin' bunny won't stop stealing my popcorn." |
Early on we sense Donnie Darko is a parable about teen angst and adolescent intellectual
yearning, but then it shifts gears and becomes an existentialist science
fiction tale that either sheds light on self-actualization or depicts the
implosion of a gifted youth. By the
film’s closing scenes, we’re not necessarily sure how to speak to the chain of
events unfolding, only that its hero seems to have come closer to understanding
his purpose in life. One of the film’s
greatest strengths is the refusal to provide answers to Donnie’s confounding journey,
leaving the viewer alone in their interpretation of the teen’s foray into
either wisdom or madness. While
detractors are quick to complain the lack of a more concrete answer speaks to
lofty artistic pretension, Donnie Darko’s
characters are so richly drawn with a fully realized portrait of adolescent
frustration, that to provide a simple explanation would take away from the
film’s timeless appeal.
Setting the mood almost immediately is
Steven Poster’s deep blue cinematography, which looks and feels a bit like
James Cameron with the low contrast of David Fincher. From the opening shots of the morning sunrise
with the camera slowing tracking towards Donnie awakening in the middle of the
road, there’s an eerie, almost supernatural feel to the scenery as the confused
hero rises to his feet. Accentuating the
almost ghostly visuals is the evocative score by Michael Andrews, with an
almost dreamy choir underscored by a melancholy piano. Taking cues from David Lynch’s composer
Angelo Baladamenti during some of Donnie’s more unsettling encounters with his
demonic imaginary friend is the use of ambience, sounding not unlike a boiler
room. Much like Lynch, the mood tends to
shift abruptly between ethereal awe and visceral terror, providing viewers
insight into Donnie’s anxieties and fears.
A truly independent effects laden journey
through time and space, Donnie Darko nearly
disappeared into the vortex with its eponymous hero. Facing a straight-to-video release before
Drew Barrymore’s production company Flower Films ultimately provided a limited
theatrical run, Donnie Darko quickly
faded into obscurity. Thanks to the
success of the DVD release, however, Kelly’s offbeat sci-fi gem soon found
reappraisal and blossomed into a cult phenomenon, prompting a theatrical
re-release of the newly created Director’s Cut as well as spawning popular
memorabilia including apparel and action figurines of Frank. What was once a clandestine oddity known
among devoted cinephiles suddenly became a trendy mainstream bandwagon the
average moviegoer took a keen interest in being a part of. Richard Kelly was now a director held in high
regard in the film community. But as
with any first time director who piques before their career begins, what must
go up will inevitably come down, a theory proved to many while remaining open
to debate with others with the arrival of his next project, Southland Tales.
7/10 –Andrew Kotwicki
Southland
Tales (2006 – written and directed by Richard Kelly)
“This is the way the world ends. Not with
a whimper, but with a bang.”
Southland
Tales,
Richard Kelly’s enthusiastic follow-up to his cult favorite Donnie Darko, presents another
outlandish time paradoxical science fiction thriller/comedy ensemble mishmash
of sorts. Much like Donnie Darko, the film opens on its amnesiac action movie star
Boxer Santaros (played excellently by Dwayne Johnson) awakening in the middle
of the desert of Lake Mead, Nevada, confused and frightened by circumstances
suggesting he was placed there purposely for reasons unknown. After
disappearing from his wife Madeline Frost (Mandy Moore) and her high profile
political family, Santaros and porn star Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar) pen
a screenplay for his next potential project The
Power, a tale of sociopolitical apocalypse. To prepare for the new role,
Santaros is set up on a “ride along” with Police Officer Roland Taverner (Seann
William Scott), an Iraq war veteran who isn’t entirely who he seems. Little does Santaros know, but the entire
“ride along” was orchestrated by a terrorist group called The Neo-Marxist
party. And that’s just a handful of information commencing the gigantic Easter
egg hunt Southland Tales embarks on,
intertwining several storylines like a bike wheel with all the spokes leading
to a holistic base.
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| "I guess after all this time I figured out what the Rock was cookin'. It's a face. A god damned face." |
Now if that wasn’t enough to digest, the
cast will surely stuff you up. After the aforementioned, the cast is hugely
famous with names like, Amy Poelher, Eli Roth, Jon Lovitz, Jeneane Garofalo,
Christopher Lambert, Cheri Oteri, and Justin Timberlake! Justin Timberlake’s
character is not only the first person you see after the prelude, but he also
narrates the entire movie. He plays a war veteran named Pilot Abiline and is
outstanding, especially in one scene in particular. Of course this wouldn’t be a
Richard Kelly movie without frontman Holmes Osborne, best remembered as Donnie Darko’s father. Theoretically, you could make the argument Donnie Darko and Southland Tales take place simultaneously in alternative
dimensions, as they are set exactly 20 years apart from each other and follow
similar paths. Time travel and portals are prominent in both movies, with the
leads on a quest to seek out their unknown destinies careening towards
apocalyptic tragedy ultimately leaving viewers with more questions than
answers. And what would a Richard Kelly film be without an all-girl dance group
tying everything together. Maybe a little farfetched, but both movies execute
this identical scenario flawlessly.
Richard Kelly also released three prequel
graphic novels to prepare viewers. Unfortunately, this didn’t help shuttle the
movie at all. Where Donnie Darko struck
a chord with audiences, Southland Tales did
the exact opposite. Opening in rough form at about 160 minutes at the
prestigious Cannes Film Festival, the film was immediately branded as the worst
film to ever play there. Kelly responded by striking a deal with Sony Pictures
to recut the film in exchange for more money to finish the film’s visual
effects, bringing it to a length of approximately 145 minutes. Much like Donnie Darko’s initial release, Southland Tales died a quiet death
theatrically before developing a cult following on DVD. Southland Tale is mind bending, funny, dark, beautifully shot, and
holds the perfect music that ironically helps fill in the emptiness the lead
feels. Considered by many to be a misfire, it is absolutely worth a look and is
damn entertaining with witty and dry humor outside the normal comedy. Whether
or not you walk away with an understanding of Southland Tales won’t take away from the cerebral flirtation.
Feeling backed into a corner by Southland,
Kelly then set his sights on a more commercial project that would be an easier
sell for studios: The Box. Sadly,
where many saw Southland as a career
ender for the young writer-director, The
Box drove the nail further into the coffin than anyone (including Kelly
die-hards) could have anticipated.
7/10 – Heather Contreras
The
Box (2009 – directed by Richard Kelly)
After the debacle of Southland Tales, Richard Kelly set his sights on a more commercial
project to rebuild his career: an adaptation of the Richard Matheson short
story Button, Button. Previously adapted into a 1980s Twilight Zone episode before the film
was ultimately renamed The Box and reset
in the 1970s, it tells the story of a married couple with a son, Arthur (James
Mardsen) and Norma Lewis (Cameron Diaz).
Struggling to make ends meet between Norma’s teaching stint and Arthur’s
dwindling engineering profession at NASA, the duo is visited seemingly at
random by a mysterious disfigured man named Mr. Steward (Frank Langella) who
presents to them a wooden box with a button on top. The catch is deceptively simple: whoever
presses the button on the box will receive $1 million, meanwhile someone
unknown to them in the world will die.
Like all classic Twilight Zone fables,
the tale is a morality play asking viewers what they would do in the same
situation as Arthur and Norma struggle to come to a decision about whether or
not they should push the button.
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| "Well. It's damp and warm. I'm all in." |
At first, Kelly’s $30 million effort and semi-autobiographical
interpretation of Matheson’s short story seems promising, with the usual Kelly
regulars such as Holmes Osborne and Lisa Wyatt turning up. Visually it’s undoubtedly the director’s most
polished film with spectacular NASA set pieces lensed by Steven Poster’s dreamy
cinematography. The performances by Diaz
and Mardsen are strong and convey a sense of confused apprehension with respect
to whether or not the box’s button should be pushed. Equally exciting for the project is an
original score by the band Arcade Fire, which remains unreleased on any
commercial audio format. However,
Richard Kelly himself stated his goal was to expand the short story beyond the
confines of its initial 6 page length and despite Matheson’s full participation
in the project, it is here that The Box takes
an abrupt swan dive off the deep end into la-la land. Much like Southland
Tales, the film begins leaping about increasingly bizarre scenarios at
random with a fixation on water held in suspended animation, teleportation, supernatural
powers, secret interplanetary missions and…
If Kelly’s aims with The Box were to broaden his horizons and reach out to a wider
audience with something more accessible, he just couldn’t help himself by
engaging in his usual surrealist indulgences that border on the paranoid
schizophrenia of his eponymous hero in Donnie
Darko. In short, The Box goes crazy at the halfway mark
and never looks back. Its like two
disparately, diametrically opposed movies were sandwiched together in under two
hours. As with Southland Tales, nothing is resolved as Kelly fights tooth and nail
to shake his audience off the track with informational and sensory overload. While that worked to a certain degree in the
director’s earlier pictures, The Box’s
jarring changeover threatens to obliterate the fledgling director’s attempt to
rekindle his now flailing career. Also
unlike the aforementioned features, The
Box is curiously lacking in the humor that kept viewers on board with
whatever strange twists and turns down the rabbit hole his films would take.
Needless to say, people were fed up with Kelly’s shenanigans and dabblings in the incomprehensible
and weird. The film bombed at the box
office and was universally savaged by both critics and the few moviegoers who
saw it, with the market research firm CinemaScore branding the film with an F
based on audience reactions. While one
can never accuse Mr. Kelly of being unambitious or unoriginal, a case can
absolutely be made for his lack of discipline.
Donnie Darko and Southland Tales may have been outlandish
and perhaps incoherent, but at least they were consistent and announced their
peculiar intentions early on. With The Box, instead of merely opening doors
that pose more questions than answers, it really feels like the film leaps off
of a cliff to its own death. Since the
film’s release, Kelly has had yet to secure work in film direction or earn back
critical adulation. If he ever does come
back to the silver screen, hopefully he’ll learn that a little creative
restraint goes a long way.
5/10 – Andrew Kotwicki