The Brown Bunny (2004)
Note: Some spoilers.
If you're not the kind of person
who will march in a huff out of the theater and demand
your money back 20 minutes into this film, then you're
the type of person who will love this film. It may
take the patience of a saint to make it through Vincent
Gallo's latest film but for those who do, the final
scene will be one of massive rewards, and not just
for the obvious pre-hype reason of seeing actress
Chloe Sevigny perform oral sex on her director and
co-star.
Much like Gus Van Sant's amazing
"Gerry," "The Brown Bunny" is a film about time. The
correlation between the characters in "Gerry" being
lost and the aimlessness of the modern American youngster
didn't really occur to me when I watched that film
but Gallo's "The Brown Bunny" brings it out full force.
His character, Bud Clay, is an aimless, lost, withdrawn
young man who travels across American in search of
something, we're not sure exactly what and neither
is he, to fill the void in his empty soul. It's no
accident that Clay is a motorcycle racer, a character
who speeds alone around a never-ending, always circling
track with great noise while never once getting anywhere
or winning the race.
This is a truncated version of the
film that Gallo displayed at Cannes in 2003. That
version was booed by audiences and derided by critics.
In that version, it has been said, Gallo spent 20
minutes on a scene where he washed his van in real
time. This current version, which only runs an hour
and forty minutes, feels just as long but that sense
of pointlessness and aimlessness isn't as broad. Gallo's
Clay drives and drives and drives in this version.
At least an hour of the film is the passing American
landscape seen as it whizzes by his character's van's
filthy, bug-splattered windshield while the racer
travels across country on a journey that seems to
never end. Clay is adrift in a soulless America that
is as confused and as lackluster as he is.
Gallo points out the vast nothingness
of America with this film. His secondary characters
are just as lost as his protagonist. A teenage girl
eager to run away, a middle-aged woman full of an
unknown sadness, an elderly woman unsure of the past,
a prostitute doing nothing more than her job, a drug
addict who struggles to explain her actions, these
characters drizzle across Gallo's screen providing
an overlapping sorrow and listlessness to that within
his racer. We see these characters in glimpses as
Gallo drives across America. After all this existential
grief and melancholia, a scene where he washes the
dirt away from his van would surely help to wash away
the sorrow. We are drenched in the numbness of existence
in the film. It washes us along the gutter of Gallo's
characters' lives. More time and more nothingness
in this film would only make it more intense, more
real. While this cut of the film works wonderfully,
it amazingly leaves the faithful wishing for only
more.
Gallo is certainly talented as a
filmmaker and actor. We learned as much from his remarkable
film "Buffalo 66." Here his Bud Clay has much in common
with his wounded protagonist in his earlier film,
so he doesn't stretch much as an actor but he does
continue to impress with his work. Meanwhile behind
the camera, Gallo has become even more interesting
and compelling. His images are bold, stylized chunks
of time, exposed slowly and lovingly across the screen,
providing ample opportunity to consider their beauty
and impact. Just when we think Gallo has simply taken
a camera on the road with him and set up tripod to
use only static shots (much as Rick Linklater did
in his early film "It
is Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books,")
a scene will suddenly use subtle camera movement to
capture the beauty of a moment.
And Gallo is equally adept when
using sound. Often his film fades to silence and we
are allowed to consider the vast nothingness of the
images here. But just as often, the continual nothingness
is awakened by a gorgeous and perfect piece of music
(usually played in its entirety) that completely and
succinctly encapsulate the moment. These are monumental
moments in the film as Gallo provides a spark of beauty
in these minutes of ennui brought on by the quiet
desperation of loneliness and lamentation.
Finally, Gallo's much discussed
climax, no pun intended, to the story is nothing short
of the most intense ten minutes in a feature film
in quite some time. This is a jaw-dropping (gee, I
really didn't mean that pun either) finale to the
film that is utterly amazing. Sevigny should be rewarded
with the highest accolades her profession offers for
the amazing courage she reveals by accepting this
role. To be blunt, its not every actress who will
take a cock in the mouth on camera for the sake of
art (many will do it off screen for money and parts,
I'm sure) yet Sevigny tackles the role with nothing
short of raw courage and proves herself to be quite
amazing here. This is not gentle or willy-nilly (is
that another pun?) stuff but truly heady (geez) material
that is challenging, bold and audacious. And lest
one think Sevigny should be heralded simply for her
audacity in her sexual actions on screen here, let
it be said that her acting in the scene is simply
wondrous.
In role after role, in film after
film, Sevigny has proven herself to be one of the
best actresses of her generation and this film is
no less than her other works. When one considers her
courageous roles in this film and "Boys Don't Cry"
with her pitch perfect acting in nearly every film
she has been in, from "Kids" to "Shattered Glass"
to "The Last Days of Disco" to "Dogville," Sevigny
is easily accorded the title The Best Actress of Her
Generation. Hollywood should be kissing her feet,
begging her to appear in their films. (They probably
have. Thank goodness she is too smart and too devoted
as an actress to allow their wooing to seduce her).
Gallo, likewise, should be congratulated
continually over the next few months for his screen
writing, acting and directing skills in bringing such
an amazing scene to fruition. Go ahead and see the
movie for wrong-headed, prurient interest. What you'll
find is one of the saddest, most troubling, most poignant
moments in a movie you will ever experience. This
is a tough film, one that trusts its audience to "get
it" and too accept it. Gallo has brought independent
film, yet again, to a new level.
Sex and sexuality is tied into nearly
everything we do in our lives. In Gallo's "The Brown
Bunny" it is tied into sorrow, regret and utter disparity.
This is a film that will haunt you for a long time
after seeing it, provided, of course, that your one
of the select few who can actually sit through it.
Notes:
Also with Cheryl Tiegs.
Gallo said he had shot scenes with
Winona Ryder and Kirsten Dunst for the film and fired
them.
The songs in the film are "Tears
for Dolphy" by Ted Curson, "Come Wander with Me" by
Jeff Alexander, "Beautiful" by Gordon Lightfoot, "Milk
and Honey" by Jackson C. Frank, and "Smooth" by Matisse.
Gallo shot the hotel scenes with
Sevigny in private with no cameraman.
A billboard depicting Gallo and
Sevigny was erected (no pun intended) on Hollywood
Blvd. but was removed within five days due to complaints.
This may be the image that also appears on the movie
soundtrack CD cover.
The Cannes version ran about 2 hours
and 5 minutes. Roger Ebert called it, "The worst movie
ever admitted to Cannes."
The film began an arthouse run in
the U.S. in August of 2004.
Viewed at a press sneak at the Dobie
in Austin in September, 2004.
