September 06, 2004
Review: The Brown Bunny
Well, I went into The Brown Bunny having absolutely no idea about the controversy at Cannes or the very public feud between writer/director Vincent Gallo and Roger Ebert (which I’ll talk about later). Instead, the only reason I watched this movie was because the wife heard there was an explicit scene of Chloe Sevigny performing oral sex, and who am I to say no to that? Seriously! My wife prides herself as being a pro-porn feminist.
Unfortunately, porn would have been much more entertaining. This was almost a complete waste of our time. I even flipped out my new Palm handheld half-way through the film to read a book, occasionally looking up from time to time to see if we’d gotten to the sex scene (and if you’re really set on seeing that scene, go ahead and grab dinner during the first hour or so, and you should be back in plenty of time to see it).
At its heart, The Brown Bunny is one of those slow, pretentious films that cares more about how it looks than what it says. It reminded me of the worst-ever film I ever saw at Cinequest, Ripples (Sazanami), which consisted of static wide shots showing a character, in a painfully tedious manner, making their way from one side of the screen to the other. Well this film’s pretty much the same thing, as it’s about Gallo driving cross-country in his van, so you’re subjected to long, monotonous shots of the back of his head and a dirty windshield as he drives on the freeway. Sheesh, it doesn’t take a 90-minute film to show that a road trip is long, lonely, and boring. We already know that. And realize, I am not easily bored. I am one of the most easily amused people you’ll ever meet. And I’ve liked other films that moved slowly, like Lost in Translation and The Station Agent. But those were character-driven films which had… well… interesting characters.
In this film, there are no interesting characters. Instead, Gallo plays Bud Clay, a motorcycle racer with an empty life that goes in circles. A point beaten to death in the first scene, where you see a distant motorcycle race for what seems like hours (it’s probably five minutes or so). Now, I’m a Formula One racing fan, so motor races generally don’t bore me. But here, there’s no music, no narration, no indication of who’s winning or losing, who’s passing whom, or why we should even care in the first place. You just see motorcycles going around and around on the track. Yes, there’s symbolism, but it’s a point that the film beats into your head for an hour and a half.
Later we are treated to interminably long scenes of Bud doing mundane tasks, like eating, stopping at a gas station, taking a shower, and getting dressed. In a good film, the filmmaker would extract individual moments from these tasks that reveal something unusual about the character. Not in this film. The whole point is the utter mundane-ness. And despite the inordinate amount of screen time, we really don’t learn anything useful about Bud except that something’s wrong with him.
That’s revealed by Bud’s bizarre behavior in encounters with various women along the way. You would think these would break up the tedium, but there’s surprisingly little dialogue. Instead, the scenes show the characters kissing and making out for lengthy periods of time. What little dialogue there is sounds unrealistic and conveys little about either character. Ditto for the acting, which seems rather flat (even Chloe Sevigny). It’s possible that this is intentional, given the revelation at the end, but the impression it gave me was amateurism (and there are much more effective ways to hint that all is not as it seems).
To be sure, the film is not quite as boring as you might expect, as some of the shots are framed in somewhat interesting ways. In particular, I liked the shot where he walks to ring the doorbell of Daisy’s parents, but his parked van is prominently framed in the center of the screen (probably an indicator of the van’s position in Bud’s life, if that wasn’t already obvious). But the camera-work is largely unimpressive. In most scenes, (including that one), the camera doesn’t move at all. This is probably because Gallo, in addition to directing, writing, and acting, insisted on also being the director of photography, and thus filmed a lot using camera stands. To be sure, it’s important to know when not to move the camera, but Gallo takes it to a ridiculous extreme. It also means that you shouldn’t try to bother reading too much into any of the details you see on screen, because you can be pretty sure that it didn’t have much to do with Gallo.
And don’t expect anything nearly as visually inventive as Garden State or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or anything Terry Gilliam has ever directed. Gallo certainly has his own distinctive style, but the film still has an amateurish student film look, with shots that look different for the sake of looking different, and not to further the story or reveal anything about the characters. Indeed, it looks a lot like abstract art — but crappy abstract art. Art that doesn’t have anything to say, other than the director calling attention to himself and celebrating his own self-importance and egotistical nature to the point of mind-numbing tedium. The film would probably be more accurately termed artistic masturbation — and in more ways than one.
I’m referring, of course, to that infamous final sex scene. To be sure, it was not gratuitous, revealing a lot more about the characters than the entire rest of the movie. However, I saw no reason at all for it to have been that graphic. The only reason to reveal Gallo’s penis was for him to show it off (which I suppose is rather appropriate, given that the entire film reeks of self-indulgence). And, of course, to garner controversy so he can sell more tickets — indeed, they were brazenly blatant about it, advertising that scene in billboards.
That scene also reveals an important plot twist, but it’s not that surprising, nor original, so it doesn’t even come close to saving this movie. So Bud has suffered loss. Big whoop. That was obvious from the start, and it’s been done before. Indeed, almost every single film of value involves a character dealing with pain. For example, one of the most realistic and artistic films about a character learning to cope with loss is the late Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Blue (the first part of his excellent “Three Colors” trilogy). Another example is the Gilliam’s overlooked The Fisher King, where Robin William’s character retreats into a world of his own creation. Even Robin William’s rather stock character in Good Will Hunting is more interesting than Bud Clay.
Frankly, there’s only enough material here for a ten-minute short film. I came to that conclusion independently of Ebert, but it hardly takes a genius to realize that most of the film is filler. Indeed, after a disastrous reception at Cannes (where it was heckled by the audience and called the worst movie in the festival’s history by Ebert), Gallo himself cut twenty-six minutes from the film (including such gems as Bud washing his van) to get it down to the ninety-two minute cut that I saw. Ebert amazingly likes this new version, but I strongly suspect that was mostly because it looked so good in comparison to how bad it used to be. That, plus he probably regrets his spat with Gallo.
It’s a shame, because I think Ebert had it right the first time. In fact, his exchange with Gallo is a helluva lot more entertaining and insightful than the film itself. After Cannes, Gallo fired back at Ebert, calling him “a fat pig” with “the physique of a slave trader” (pretty indicative of the kind of ego we’re dealing with here).
Ebert, channeling Winston Churchill, replied, “It is true that I am fat. But one day I shall be thin, and he will still be the director of The Brown Bunny.” Indeed.
I myself am so pissed at the time wasted by this film that I’d tell Gallo where to stick that bunny. But since it’s brown and it stinks, that’s probably where he got it from in the first place.
Overall rating: 2 out of 10 frowny fishies (frowny because they were stuck watching the film instead of swimming away, happy and free, like the other eight cute smiley fishies).
