Off the Map

I'm a little sensitive about movies that deal with mental illness. In our culture, stigma is in the groundwater and the mentally ill are usually portrayed as psychopathic killers (author's note: big difference between someone who's psychotic and someone who's a sociopath.) Perhaps that's why I found this little movie charming. This film explores a very real mental illness - clinical depression - in a gentle and sympathetic fashion.

Charley and Arlene Groden (Sam Elliot and Joan Allen) are not your average couple. With their precocious daughter Bo (a delightful Valentina d'Angelis,) they've elected to live "off the map," growing their own food and bartering for everything else in a tiny town in New Mexico. Charley has sunk into a deep and lasting depression for no apparent reason, and as Arlene struggles to hold the family together they are suddenly visited by the IRS for several years of failing to file income taxes. The agent (Jim True-Frost) finds himself enamored with the Grodens, particularly Arlene, and ends up staying on and pursuing his own demons right along with Charley.

Campbell Scott has directed a sensitive, magical look into the hearts of his characters. Elliot and Allen are perfectly cast as our starcrossed oddballs. It may require some suspension of disbelief, but this is a sweet little modern fairy tale about love and letting it be. More info here.

Death of a President

The controversy surrounding the release of this film in 2006 was brief, noisy and enough to spur my curiosity. Directed by Gabriel Range (who also co-wrote the screenplay,) this British made film broke a lot of taboos by depicting the fictional assassination of a living and sitting US President, George W. Bush. Hilary Clinton called the film, "despicable." The Bush Administration refused to comment. Reviewers were all over the place - calling it everything from a silly marketing ploy to real genius. It won the International Critics Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. It never hit a movie screen in the US.

Although I spent a good deal of the film trying to figure out just what the message might be, I still found it intriguing. Whether you love the Deciderer in Chief or loathe him, it's bound to make you mighty uncomfortable to watch his assassination - a point that makes you wonder if the filmmaker took into account how that discomfort will effect your overall take on the film. It is, however, fascinating to watch how live footage is seamlessly morphed into an apparent documentary complete with the melodramatic real time interviews we all know and hate. (The state funeral must have been Gerald Ford.)

By the way, the message does finally become apparent in the last 10 minutes or so of the film - and it is a worthy one. So I guess I fall into the category of reviewer who found it worth the watch; it was just that thought provoking, even if it does push the limits of taste. You can see the lackluster website here.

Jindabyne

It's the rare director that can set a tone in the opening of a film and maintain that same tone through another 100 or so minutes. Ray Lawrence manages to keep you miserably uncomfortable from the first tense minutes as you watch something bad about to happen right through to the aching end of this haunting and beautiful film. I found myself biting my nails and squirming all the way.

Jindabyne happens to be set in a particularly bleak but gorgeous part of Australia, but it could have been anywhere. The central story line is one of four good old boys on a fishing trip who happen upon a young woman's corpse in the river, and opt to fish first and report later. Well, she was already dead now, wasn't she? The consequences of this thoughtless act then avalanche through the town - made all the more poignant by the fact that the dead girl is aboriginal (read this Mexican, Black, or Minority of Your Choice.)

Stellar performances from all concerned, including Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne, should be noted but it is the screenplay and direction that make this film amazing. Every character has an open wound; they are all profoundly human and all questioning their own motives in every tidy scene. Lawrence doesn't waste a minute or a line. In the end, you feel you know these people and you hurt right along with them. That's genius. Here's another review.