A collage of “Indie” clichés.
The H-Bomb: Enoch (Henry Hopper) is your basic indie film protagonist; a sensitive young man with a tragic family history who’s lost and directionless and full of angst, yada, yada, yada. He’s in between schools for reasons we’re told late in the film (not that it really matters) and his favorite past times include crashing the funerals of complete strangers and playing Battleship with his best friend, Hiroshi (Ryo Kase), who just happens to be the ghost of a WWII Japanese Kamikaze pilot… just take a moment and let that last bit sink in. Ready to move on? Okay.
One day, while crashing a funeral, Enoch meets a girl named Annabel (Mia Wasikowska). Now much in the way that Enoch is our typical indie film leading man, Annabel is our typical indie film leading lady; she’s sweet, free spirited, into nature (including bugs and birds), is not necessarily drop dead gorgeous, but attractive enough to make us smitten with her, and, of course, she is the only person on the planet who can relate to our spastic weirdo of a protagonist. (This is the exact kind of character Zooey Deschanel would’ve played had the movie been made some 4-5 years ago)
Enoch and Annabel have a few meetings before they really hit it off, but eventually they bond over their conversations about funeral crashing, funeral attire, musical instruments, and I forget what else. Then, right before this predictably quirky relationship can really hit its stride, Annabel drops an A-Bomb… she’s got cancer and she only has three months to live. Enoch takes this news remarkably well and continues the relationship in which they converse with Hiroshi the ghost, throw rocks at passing trains, go trick or treating, memorize facts from bird books, along with other such activities that I would most definitely engage in if I knew I was going to keel over in three months time.
Restless, which came out quietly last Fall, is Un Film du Gus Van Sant, a director most people will know from Good Will Hunting, but who I like more for My Own Private Idaho and Elephant. I won’t do a full run down of his career, I’ll just say he’s had his share of solid films (Milk) and not-so-solid (Psycho remake), and that he’s one of those directors whose films I will go out of my way to see. And now that I have gone way out of my way to see Restless, I can say that it is a movie that rightly went in and out of theaters with little notice, as the movie going public missed absolutely nothing when it flew underneath their radars.
Independent films over the last few years, particularly independent romantic dramedies, have developed their own aesthetic, become basically their own genre, with their own set of clichés; and aside from the ones already laid out, we are also treated to such staples as the typical indie soundtrack. It’s hard to describe, really… it’s the kind of music that has a lot of bouncy, boinging noises in it, the kind that’s spunky, playful, grating, and just weird. It also features cinematography that is nice but self-consciously artsy, chock full of pretty, perfectly composed pictures of our heroes drawing chalk lines around themselves, and overall, a whimsical vibe that’s meant to be endearing but just comes off as smug.
What I have just described is more or less the whole of Gus Van Sant’s Restless, a stereotypical check list of modern “independent” movie clichés, and in describing it, hopefully, I have taken away any and all interest you might have had in actually seeing this irritatingly self-satisfied wank-fest. It is basically, weird boy meets weird girl, they have weird relationship, in which they have one boring, pretentious conversation after another, and then she, and I’m not spoiling a thing, dies of her cancer. And it’s no biggie when Annabel does die, because she’s made peace with that and goes out with a smile, and we should all just party when she kicks the bucket, because that’s what she would want.
Plus, you know what’s really nice about her cancer, it’s that special kind of movie cancer, the kind that allows her to look all cute and pixie-like right up until the bitter end. Ya know, unlike real cancer, where people are usually bald from chemo, deathly thin, and look like they’re being eaten away from the inside out, which, by they way, Mr. Van Sant, is what happens to real people with real cancer, fuck you very much!
But I don’t mean to get so hot under the collar, because Restless, which is inexplicably co-produced by Ron and Bryce Dallas Howard, is not a completely awful movie, it’s just an awfully annoying one with its overly familiar, oh-so-hip art house vibe. Usually, at least the actors would help make things a little bearable, but here, we get Hopper (son of Dennis), who displays absolutely none of his late father’s charismatic intensity, and instead just mopes through this flick like a drippy little emo punk you just want to beat the shit out of on general principle. In other words, I didn’t like him.
Then there’s Wasikowska (good thing this is a written review, so I wouldn’t have to try and butcher that), who does manage to be appealing in a way, but again, her character is the stock indie chick in a film that is made up entirely of stock indie film ingredients. I wouldn’t be harping on this so much if it wasn’t so damn true! Add onto that it’s never charming, never moving, nor does it ever ring emotionally true even once in it’s ninety-something minutes (and even that slim running time feels too long). With all that, Restless adds up to nothing more than one a big, fat, obnoxious cliché of independent cinema that absolutely is not worth anyone’s time of day.
