Greedy to inherit his uncle's one-unit slum, Travis (Wes Bentley) euthanizes his hapless relative by strumming his guitar and singing him to death, and then, overwhelmed by ennui, does the world a service by burning all his music, songbooks, and lyrics.
Years pass during which Travis harvests wild peyote, and maintains a shrine by keeping a picture of George Will propped on his uncle's bed, right under a glassless skylight so the stars may look down unimpeded by refraction. Travis is into keeping it "real," you see, and aware that into every life a little rain must fall. It is for this reason he wears two carefully styled fronds of hair framing his face rather like Mena Suvari and Jason Biggs did in Loser (2000).
But living off the grid has drawbacks. Although he learns to survive without water, Travis must hunt daily for rodents to run his generators, and reptiles to eat. Also, regularly having to pump out the composting toilet into the gigantic, rusting sewage tank becomes tiresome. Eventually he discovers that the glamour of solitary, desert slum life pales like the sun bleached enamel of his pickup. Travis is not Thoreau.
At this point, coincident with his thirtieth birthday, Travis follows a drifting plastic bag and discovers The Cave. Entering the tunnel-like maw, he is guided by a naked Tom Laughlin through an ecstatic vision of an all-tile bathroom, (the basis of modern civilization), and emerges in a metaphorical rebirth characterized by a full-blown psychotic episode, the delusional architecture of which includes the existence of two "former band-mates," Anna (Amber Tamblyn), and Barry (Vincent Piazza).
As the film begins Travis is fully engaged with these hallucinations. Although writer Adam Chanzit and director Gabriel Cowan initially leave the reality of Anna and Barry ambiguous, their phantasmagoric status is revealed by details similar to Herman Wouk's description of Captain Queeg as "a Freudian delight; he crawls with clues." For example:
1. Anna and Barry were both "born" in the same year, month and week as Travis.
2. The "reunion" is organized, (in fact, insisted upon), by Travis to celebrate their thirtieth birthdays, yet he owns neither telephone nor computer, (revealed when Barry "loses" his telephone but does not ask to borrow Travis').
3. Travis lives off a dirt road in the desert without human artifacts between his dwelling and the horizon, yet his guests have no difficulty with wireless connectivity.
4. Travis exhibits uniform hostility towards Anna and Barry's successful integration into mainstream society, presenting an almost paranoid obsession with material status. This is very apparent when he demands that they place a dollar value on his "assistance" in his uncle's death. Travis' narcissistic denial is so profound he is incapable of recognizing that most people who care for a dying relative or loved one must do so without simultaneously being a freeloader like himself.
5. Travis' conceptualizations of Anna and Barry are hardly even caricatures. They are mere cartoons. Both are sellouts. Both are sexualized objects. Both are unobtainable. And both betray Travis by engaging in joyless intercourse on the second night, after Travis absents himself without notice and spends the dark hours shirtless on the desert floor. This masochistic fantasy reeks of self-flagellation accentuated with more than a touch of voyeurism when we learn Travis has recorded the encounter on Barry's cell phone, which he had previously stolen.
6. While Barry is the more detailed hallucination, he is also the more absurd.
Barry is infantile: we see and hear about his masturbation rituals; we see him have a tantrum, break the bathroom mirror, (whose disappearing fragments reflect his (i.e. Travis') fractured self), fall asleep on the floor in a half-fetal position, and dream he encounters a digitally enhanced white unicorn that can't find its "horn."
Barry is quite literally anal: we see and hear about his ritual of entirely disrobing prior to defecating. (Years earlier Travis found a neatly folded pile of clothing in a dorm latrine and couldn't help prowling through it because he "had to meet someone who took off all his clothes to shit.")
Barry is a coward: he left the band for law school without telling the others because he was afraid of Travis' ridicule; he failed to invite Travis to his wedding because he was afraid Travis might shame him.
Barry is dominated by his wife: he must run five miles every morning because she insists and becomes almost frantic when he can't find his phone and report to her.
A telling exchange occurs near the end of the film when Travis says to Barry, "Maybe I'll come back as a hard working Jew." Hence Barry is an infantile, anal, timid, sexually insecure, Jewish tax attorney tied with thick apron strings. Such a creature could only exist within a disordered cranium.
7. When Travis breaks into one of the trio's old standards Anna and Barry join in with pleasure. Since we know Travis' music is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things, the pair can only be the stuff that dreams are made on.
More examples could easily be cited.
The film closes at the start of the third night. Anna and Barry trundle back into the aether, while our hero returns to The Cave to give suicide another try. We can but hope he at least makes a nice dietary supplement for those cute coyotes we never got to meet.
Certainly not as dreadful as The Big Chill (1983), a movie about soulless androids striking facile poses in a series of furniture showrooms, but just about as hollow as Lawrence Kasdan's protestations that he had never even heard of John Sayles' Return of the Seacaucus Seven (1979). Where The Graduate (1967) is supposed to enter into all this is beyond me.
Anyway, it should make a good second feature on Tamblyn Family Movie Night along with Peyton Place (1957), West Side Story (1961), or The Haunting (1963).
XYZ
Years pass during which Travis harvests wild peyote, and maintains a shrine by keeping a picture of George Will propped on his uncle's bed, right under a glassless skylight so the stars may look down unimpeded by refraction. Travis is into keeping it "real," you see, and aware that into every life a little rain must fall. It is for this reason he wears two carefully styled fronds of hair framing his face rather like Mena Suvari and Jason Biggs did in Loser (2000).
But living off the grid has drawbacks. Although he learns to survive without water, Travis must hunt daily for rodents to run his generators, and reptiles to eat. Also, regularly having to pump out the composting toilet into the gigantic, rusting sewage tank becomes tiresome. Eventually he discovers that the glamour of solitary, desert slum life pales like the sun bleached enamel of his pickup. Travis is not Thoreau.
At this point, coincident with his thirtieth birthday, Travis follows a drifting plastic bag and discovers The Cave. Entering the tunnel-like maw, he is guided by a naked Tom Laughlin through an ecstatic vision of an all-tile bathroom, (the basis of modern civilization), and emerges in a metaphorical rebirth characterized by a full-blown psychotic episode, the delusional architecture of which includes the existence of two "former band-mates," Anna (Amber Tamblyn), and Barry (Vincent Piazza).
As the film begins Travis is fully engaged with these hallucinations. Although writer Adam Chanzit and director Gabriel Cowan initially leave the reality of Anna and Barry ambiguous, their phantasmagoric status is revealed by details similar to Herman Wouk's description of Captain Queeg as "a Freudian delight; he crawls with clues." For example:
1. Anna and Barry were both "born" in the same year, month and week as Travis.
2. The "reunion" is organized, (in fact, insisted upon), by Travis to celebrate their thirtieth birthdays, yet he owns neither telephone nor computer, (revealed when Barry "loses" his telephone but does not ask to borrow Travis').
3. Travis lives off a dirt road in the desert without human artifacts between his dwelling and the horizon, yet his guests have no difficulty with wireless connectivity.
4. Travis exhibits uniform hostility towards Anna and Barry's successful integration into mainstream society, presenting an almost paranoid obsession with material status. This is very apparent when he demands that they place a dollar value on his "assistance" in his uncle's death. Travis' narcissistic denial is so profound he is incapable of recognizing that most people who care for a dying relative or loved one must do so without simultaneously being a freeloader like himself.
5. Travis' conceptualizations of Anna and Barry are hardly even caricatures. They are mere cartoons. Both are sellouts. Both are sexualized objects. Both are unobtainable. And both betray Travis by engaging in joyless intercourse on the second night, after Travis absents himself without notice and spends the dark hours shirtless on the desert floor. This masochistic fantasy reeks of self-flagellation accentuated with more than a touch of voyeurism when we learn Travis has recorded the encounter on Barry's cell phone, which he had previously stolen.
6. While Barry is the more detailed hallucination, he is also the more absurd.
Barry is infantile: we see and hear about his masturbation rituals; we see him have a tantrum, break the bathroom mirror, (whose disappearing fragments reflect his (i.e. Travis') fractured self), fall asleep on the floor in a half-fetal position, and dream he encounters a digitally enhanced white unicorn that can't find its "horn."
Barry is quite literally anal: we see and hear about his ritual of entirely disrobing prior to defecating. (Years earlier Travis found a neatly folded pile of clothing in a dorm latrine and couldn't help prowling through it because he "had to meet someone who took off all his clothes to shit.")
Barry is a coward: he left the band for law school without telling the others because he was afraid of Travis' ridicule; he failed to invite Travis to his wedding because he was afraid Travis might shame him.
Barry is dominated by his wife: he must run five miles every morning because she insists and becomes almost frantic when he can't find his phone and report to her.
A telling exchange occurs near the end of the film when Travis says to Barry, "Maybe I'll come back as a hard working Jew." Hence Barry is an infantile, anal, timid, sexually insecure, Jewish tax attorney tied with thick apron strings. Such a creature could only exist within a disordered cranium.
7. When Travis breaks into one of the trio's old standards Anna and Barry join in with pleasure. Since we know Travis' music is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things, the pair can only be the stuff that dreams are made on.
More examples could easily be cited.
The film closes at the start of the third night. Anna and Barry trundle back into the aether, while our hero returns to The Cave to give suicide another try. We can but hope he at least makes a nice dietary supplement for those cute coyotes we never got to meet.
Certainly not as dreadful as The Big Chill (1983), a movie about soulless androids striking facile poses in a series of furniture showrooms, but just about as hollow as Lawrence Kasdan's protestations that he had never even heard of John Sayles' Return of the Seacaucus Seven (1979). Where The Graduate (1967) is supposed to enter into all this is beyond me.
Anyway, it should make a good second feature on Tamblyn Family Movie Night along with Peyton Place (1957), West Side Story (1961), or The Haunting (1963).
XYZ