Honestly, I went in wanting to dislike this film. Not realizing until the immediate preceding minutes to the screening that it was directed by Abel Ferrara, I was flooded with the awful experience I had watching his indulgent nihilism in the original (and way inferior) Bad Lieutenant. I suppose that is what I get for trying to pack in as many films as I could in a 48-hour period (nine to be exact) without attention to detail. The movie, however, had to have drawn the most eclectically dressed crowd during my time at the Festival, with a lot of standout outfits. Before the screening, Ferrara shared a few words ending with, “Enjoy the movie … or not,” as he chuckled to himself off stage.
Cisco and Skye are holed up in their apartment watching new-age advice on their iPad and skyping on their computer screen. Skye abstractly paints her canvasses while he’s obsessed with video-phoning. There is zero complicity as far as the characters are concerned, so the film is more about people throwing their hands in the air and deciding how they are going to spend their remaining last moments as civilization is about to completely cease to exist. There are strong displays of hedonism, mostly of the sexual variety involving two partners who are firmly committed to one another (which can’t be too hard with a contract that’s about to expire). Elsewhere, we get friends and family members sitting around, waiting for the night to fall permanently. Prince unfortunately had it all wrong, because people in 2012 aren’t partying like it’s “1999.” No one here has a lion in their pocket. Perhaps it’s because of budgetary reasons. 9/11 references are peppered through the film.
The end of the earth in reality would probably be more gradual if it related to global warming and the ozone layer as the film purports instead of the charming Ghostbuster-lite special effects that arrive on cue and send off the final four minutes of earth's doom. From then on, we’re basically treated to a variation on the opening credits of HBO’s True Blood. Ultimately harmless, Ferrara states the obvious when he tells the audience afterwards that it wasn’t “an earth science project about how the world is going to end.”
Still, at an 85-minute run-time, I would have been a lot better off if the end of the world came at 3:19 AM instead of the 4:44 AM deadline Ferrara offered. This film also features a short appearance from Natasha Lyonne.
Ferrara was flanked by an assortment of characters on stage as they fielded questions. Answering a query about the cinematography, D.P. Ken Kelsch shouted out into the house for his first assistant camera operator, “Is Franzi here?” This was Ferrara’s first narrative feature shot in digital on RED cameras. The picture is a little too clear and the whites too bright and clinical. Leigh displays her nude body quite often, with light bouncing off of her milky skin like she’s made of silicon.
Ferrara tried unsuccessfully to answer an audience member’s question about Skye’s painting. There was a lot of back and fourth business involving painter "Spencer," who was sitting in the house, on how much realism was involved. Dafoe—the charmer that he is—finally chimes in and agrees with the misunderstood audience member. The conversation ended with notification that the painting was for sale.
Ferrara wrote off questions such as budget by amusing to himself, “those are philosophical questions.” The actors spoke of how much they had to trust each other. I had to keep reminding my cynical, sarcastic self that I walked into and paid to be in the wrong room. It’s my own damn fault. But, with all due respect to longtime filmmaker Ferrara, damn me if I wasn't going to get a blog post out of it.
Read More 2011 Reviews
Read More 2011 Reviews
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