What Is It?

I saw Crispin Glover's "What Is It?" at the Ann Arbor film festival. Admittedly, the film was at least aptly named, because I got the distinct sense that even the writer/director could provide no answer. At the question and answer session after the screening, Mr. Glover said that the film was originally meant to be a short film to show the virtue of using actors with down-syndrome. However, this is in itself not enough of a reason to create a film. Actors are, in my opinion, building blocks for a larger vision - a larger vision that seemed muddled at best and absent at worst.

Crispin Glover also said that he wanted to address taboo subjects. Well, he does do that. But why? The film seems to have no stance, no reason for addressing anything. Does he feel these things shouldn't be taboo? The film doesn't even give me an indicator of that. Taboo for the sake of taboo is not interesting. It can't even afford to make the taboo disturbing or inciting on any level because he hasn't made the audience care in any way.

Ignoring problems with the concept for a moment, the thing that actually shocked me most was how poorly the film was put together. The editing, cinematography, and other technical aspects seemed frequently to be extremely amateur. Glover said 125-150 thousand dollars went into the movie, and I feel that the money should have been spent on different designers (Glover actually did some design himself - I know I saw at least sound design in the credits). The painted sets are okay (not great), but used poorly. Parts feel like a photographed stage play - which would be fine if that went to any sort of purpose, but in Glover's hands it just feels sloppy. Other parts are filmed like a sort of Home Movie, of inferior quality to a lot of the stuff I see first-time filmmakers do on iMovie.

Perhaps the biggest problem with "What Is It?" is I can't even understand how seriously the film is to be taken. There are some parts that feel like Glover is screaming at you to think seriously. At other points, he seems off on his own little joke. Perhaps he meant for this to be ironic, or meaningful in some way, but I just felt that Glover couldn't even get himself to give his film any sort of serious attention.

Glover said he originally wanted it to be a short film. If only it had been. At seventy-two minutes, the film runs out of imagery and ideas in the first twenty, and it is arguable if the ideas were formulated enough to claim that they were even there for that period of time.

It takes a very special kind of person to make a movie that is so wretched, beguiling, disgusting and repulsive, but make it in a way that also makes it brilliant and the quintessence of personal cinematic liberation. Crispin Glover, in all of his "out there" antics and predispositions, truly made something that is unique. In a world that has become starkly partisan, this film seems to evade the standard lines of creativity and art and effectively startle everyone.

Right off the bat, the film takes on a rather distant paradigm (if there really is a model at all) and initially shapes it with the likes of Shirley Temple in front of a swastika and naked women pleasuring a man with cerebral palsy. It's rather shocking stuff, but if you had the opportunity for the Q&A sessions after the screenings, it clearly opens up a bag of worms that leaves you wondering whether this is art or just the lowest common denominator. In either guise, you sense the tremor that this film will ultimately cause. It will never be accepted, not even by the supposed auteurs of the world who boringly speak about the human condition. You may not like it, but it is certainly something worth watching.

I appreciate surrealist art. I like dark comedy, the subversive, the cryptic and the bizarre. however this movie is nothing more than a painful waste of time. it completely reeks of "trying too hard" and the use of actors with down syndrome acts only as a gimmick rather than adding any depth. i've seen Crispin glover in other things, and usually he passes as a decent actor. he thrives when he's playing some kind of weirdo. but the only worthwhile roles he's had were written and produced by other people. his own personal work in video or music (yes music) is mostly garbage. this movie is nothing than an answer to a trivia question.

I thought this movie was supposed to be a drama, not a comedy! I thought the slide show with readings from the eight books before the film was ridiculous, and it seemed like Glover was desperately flailing in his attempts to try to sound like Hunter Thompson on acid. He needs to find his own creativity instead of trying unsuccessfully to be like others. The whole thing was pointless, though there were a few lines here and there that did make me chuckle.

But seriously, I felt like Glover was trying so hard to disturb people that he forgot about direction and plot. Was I disturbed? No. Disappointed? A little. I think it could have been a good movie, but it just wasn't put together just right. Glover, you need a do-over. I would see it again, but I do believe the experience would be better suited for ten or maybe fifteen, but not $25.

It's fine if Glover wants the protagonist to be fighting with racism in his inner psyche, but nothing screams "I want to offend people" like playing Johnny Rebel's "Some N*****s Never Die, They Just Smell That Way." That's not art, that's begging for attention.

The Q&A session afterwards? He had interesting answers, but basically it was all about "I'm trying to disturb people to make them think." Kick the dead horse a little more, why don't ya?

Crispin Glover has presented a monumental film that what will surely change cinema forever. Not only does it trace and honor the Afro-American roots that preceded Lumiere by almost a hundred years, but proudly restores that tradition and provides a very subtle critique of the modern movie business.

Profits are nowhere to be found in this low budget homage to Capra and Selznick. Hats off to to Glover for not pulling any punches whilst showing a decadent sequence involving a naked gentleman being ejaculated whilst laying inside a giant oyster. No expense - including excess pubic hair - has been spared.

On another note, I know what you must be thinking in the back of your mind: "wait, I think I have seen a graveyard sex scene before." Perhaps, but was it in the first five minutes? Did involve two fully clothed people with one too many chromosomes (each)? Crispin Glover proves that we have moved beyond the tired old traditions of repetitious childhood storytelling and myths and entered into a new realm wherein we are free to recreate and reimagine what it means to be a theater-going experience.

My long-time partner of two months, Brenda Velasquez, who recently left me, agrees with me. We might be like oil and water and sulfuric acid in the bedroom, but when the curtains go up, we are united before the grandeur of moviedom. Congratulations, Mr. Glover. We love your deliberately ratty film.