Welp, I watched Bellflower a couple times this past week. First off I love this movie, It's one of those films you feel is made specifically for you and that's a rare thing for me at least, I've really only felt this way about another indie flick called Box Elder, but for completely different reasons. This low budget film set in present day California is Actor/Director/Writer Evan Glodell's debut movie and it kicks ass. IMDB's synopsis states, "Two friends spend all their free time building flame-throwers and weapons of mass destruction in hopes that a global apocalypse will occur and clear the runway for their imaginary gang "Mother Medusa"." But, that's not really what this film is about or really what happens in it. This is a love story at its core. It's about first love, about meeting someone special and having this person morph the world in which you once lived. The story starts with, yes, two 20 some odd year "bros" blowing shit up and building a flamethrower out in some desolated CA location. Seemingly their only ambition is to go out get shit faced, then work on their post-apocalyptic gear, together.
Much of this story is a "love" story between these two characters, the seemingly blunt, honest, kind Woodrow and his overly verbose, outlandishly forward but altogether likable friend Aiden. They are lifelong friends having come up with the idea for building this flamethrower from watching a VHS recording of Mad Max too many times as kids and warping their minds as such. Later this same ambition leads them to building a car, a fucking sweet car called Medusa. This seemingly impenetrable relationship is threatened by the addition of an "honorary Medusa" in Milly. The story always seems to come back to these two friends and their unconditional love for one another.
Now for the first love aspect, where Milly enters Woodrow's life and completely distorts it both metaphorically and later physically. I don't want to spoil the movie so I will leave it at the fact that things begin spiraling out of control for all these characters, fitting in nicely to the post-apocalyptic backdrop of the whole story. The ending to this tale is something I have thought much about, something that is very ambiguous and in my opinion the strongest, most successfully ambitious aspect to the tale. At some point the narrator becomes somewhat unreliable in his narration and it is up to the viewer to put together what's being seen. I'm not even sure I understand what was really intended by Glodell, but I like what I came to the conclusion of nonetheless.
For me what made this movie transcend good and become great in my mind was the unique visual style and the soundtrack along with the honest albeit not great acting from all involved, particularly Tyler Dawson who plays Aiden. The visual style is something that just has to be experienced, Glodell built his own cameras to achieve a particular look, a look that is certainly unique in its grittiness and the whole film felt to me as though it was taking place somewhere slightly off, adding to the questionable series of events that dominate my memory of this film. The soundtrack is great, Ratatat and Santigold, you really can't beat it.
As a final note, I will leave my favorite scene from the film, this provides a great sample for the totality of the experience with Aiden narrating this movie's machismo and delusion perfectly. Lord Humongous. And yes there are things to not like about the movie such as the role women play in the film, and the characters generally disparaging actions toward them not to mention many practicalities that are overlooked such as where any money is coming from or why some characters behave as they do. These criticisms are dwarfed by the experience itself and how much fun I had watching every scene.
No comments:
Post a Comment