I’ve long been one of this film’s most ardent supporters ever since I first saw the Cannes cut in 2006, although anyone who graced it with even a slightly dismissive ‘it was alright…’ would fall into that category. Proving that ambition which misses its mark is far more offensive to people than films that succeed in their attempts to accomplish absolutely nothing, the reaction to Southland Tales is so disturbing because it promotes the censorship of filmmakers indulgences. The film is a mess and tries to be subversive, campy, and a spectacle in every frame, to be the ultimate cult film. After the unreasonably wet blowjob that fanboys gave Donnie Darko, who could blame him for wanting to be the next big geek favorite?
My only true disappointment with the film is that Kelly falls, once again, to his hero complex (or, for him, messiah complex). End-of-the-world and hero films have been a huge draw since long before the trend caught fire with disaster films like Independence Day, Mars Attracks!, and Armageddon cleaned up at the box office. The trailers promised the world in peril, on the brink of apocalypse. While most of the film delivered, the endings all cop out and an unexpected hero saves the day. In these cases, it is less the characters than it is the writer and filmmaker who seem to be taking the role of messiah, sacrificing the advertised doom and gloom for happy endings where everything goes back to normal. But these are such downers because we actually want to see the world destroyed. Why else would the films with cliffhangers be the crowd favorites? It’s not the hope of a sequel, but the prospect that there is still danger in the film’s universe when it comes to an end. A master filmmaker like Stanley Kubrick can overcome such a complex in Dr. Strangelove, ending the film with the world in a nuclear meltdown, and Werner Herzog can cite the end of days in film after film, including his latest Encounters at the End of the World.
Kelly fell victim to this in Donnie Darko, and exponentially recreates the mistake here. Southland Tales is so thrilling to me for most of its running time because the society he is portraying is on the verge of such a spectacular annihilation. I should have seen the redemption coming with the oft ‘Revelations’ citations, but the ending, revealing a ‘new Messiah,’ never fails to irk.
The film’s supposed downfalls are its juvenile humor, trite satire, bad acting, and, as already mentioned, unconstrained ambition. I forgive most of these because they feel intentional rather than like misfires, like exaggerations of the conventions and bad decisions that it is aiming to critique. While these things which are bad for the sake of being bad do begin to wear thin about halfway through, it is taken over in the film’s final third by pure cinematic spectacle. The zeppelin, election, apocalypse, and looming war all pile onto each other in a fluid, futuristic, and euphoric way. If it ever misses the mark, it is still, at the least, a representation of an amibitious filmmaker’s ideal vision. It might not be a great film, but it is essential that films like it continue to exist.
Update 4/6/09, 12:32AM: Or maybe the world does end? I’ve seen the film four times, and I always thought the world was saved at the end, but maybe not? I think it could go either way, it’s not clear.