The Guatemalan Handshake

Whatever "The Guatemalan Handshake" means in the title of Todd Rohal's offbeat comedy (I think) I certainly hope it has nothing to do with the sexually explicit definition the always helpful Urban Dictionary provided me with. However, let's say that the title stems from the graphic sexual fetish and that such symbolism of the practice exists inside Rohal's film. I would never know, for I could hardly extract anything from the film that acts like it doesn't want anything extracted from it at all.

This is a peculiar picture that manages to make ninety-eight minutes feel twice as long and exists in that rare crack of cinema where films without an identifiable genre go and reside. The plot less endeavor that is The Guatemalan Handshake seems to merge the likes of Harmony Korine's Gummo, Jared Hess's Napoleon Dynamite, and Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket to extremely eye-raising results. It opens with a power outage occurring right when a demolition derby driver (Will Oldham) abruptly vanishes from the small town he calls home. Following his disappearance, this ignites a strange series of events in the town, which seems to treat the demolition derby event as the all-encompassing purpose of their very existences. His pregnant girlfriend now feels more hopeless than ever, but determined to win the demolition derby and his father is a lonely wreck.

One of the only characters the film decides to focus on for a decent portion of the time is Turkeylegs (Katy Haywood), a precocious kid who is attempting to find her missing friend. Haywood is a nice young talent, who plays confused and aimless rather well, however, the film's act of alienating its viewers makes it hard to come to the realization that she is in fact a young talent. Things happen in this film, and I challenge anyone who has watched it to explain them and justify them in a coherent way to which the entire project makes sense. It is a series of vignettes, all nicely photographed on the sunlit landscapes of Pennsylvania and through the warm-lens of Rohal, but each one of them shockingly vapid and baffling. The actions of the characters and the fact that there are several of them that are nearly impossible to connect with because of the lack of exposition and thought given to them is immensely contradictory to the way the whimsical environment of their home is so welcoming and natural. Imagine a beautiful resort with a sign that says "come on in!" with all the guests, workers, and tourists giving you the cold shoulder.

At no point does The Guatemalan Handshake feel like a film about real people or even people that are halfway believable. They feel like the brainchild of a screenwriter giving as many obscure, colorful traits to people with names as he can think of. The result is a cold picture that purposely desensitizes its material to make it almost inaccessible and unrelatable to the average viewer. At the end, the only thing I could extract from the film is that may be trying to comment on the loneliness of rural areas. Even if that is the case, and the film's ultimate goal is to detail how being surrounded by almost nothing can lead to a person's housing nothing remotely significant, the film doesn't do a great job of making this clear or meaningful.

Todd Rohal's sophomore directorial effort was another strange piece called The Catechism Cataclysm, about a priest who reconnects with an old classmate and then proceeds to go on a canoe trip with him down a small river. The film quickly descended into a surrealist piece of work, which began to give off the vibes that you really aren't supposed to like it no matter how hard you try. Rohal used similar tactics of alienating the viewer by giving a rather unbelievable setup and an annoying lead character, but wound up making the film work on some level because of its stunning lyrical conversations between its two leads. The Guatemalan Handshake doesn't even have the benefits of lyricism in its writing; the only thing marginally poetic is the sunsoaked landscapes that begin to feel all too familiar way too quickly.

There is one great scene in the film, however, and if only it made something of a vision or a purpose clear. It involves an elderly women who has been looking for her dog the entire film, plastering signs around town and trying to get the townspeople searching. At one point in the film, she notices she is in the obituary section of the newspaper and is seen attending her own funeral. Despite this, the character still returns later in the picture, in another scene similar to the aforementioned one that is supposed to be relevant in someway and so on and so forth. A film is a terrible thing to waste, and Rohal unfortunately sacrifices humanity and commentary in The Guatemalan Handshake for oppressive weirdness and scenes with no clear purpose.

Starring: Katy Haywood, Ken Byrnes, Kathleen Kennedy, and Will Oldham. Directed by: Todd Rohal.

Underneath the initial exterior---humor and absurdity that is, The Guatemalan Handshake is a true movie with such depth in themes, characters, and perspectives that it will make you laugh and scathe you at the same time.

Throughout T.G.H, the narrative scenes are presented to us objectively, and while there's great humor, the kind where we as an audience choose to laugh because of our own judgment, that same stylistic approach that's present throughout the whole movie progressively has an entirely different effect where we see for the first time, not through our own eyes, but through Ronald's. The ending at the same time resolves nothing, and everything, or to be more accurate, shows us that there was never anything to be resolved in the first place.

This movie is one of my favorite movies released this year, and a movie for its genre, one that's unmatched in complexity, dialogue, and in character development. There is so much in this movie that's revealed to the audience on several different levels that while very entertaining, requires the viewer's patience as we are there only to watch, and only until the attend do we really understand and in turn think back in nostalgia.

This movie, is a must see.

...everything that's wrong with "indie" film. This is a hatefully pretentious, yet mind- bogglingly stupid film, made more maddening by the apparent size of the budget.

It's as if the director sat down and wrote a list of the hundred quirkiest things he could think of, and then just strung them together into a "screenplay," thinking he was too much of an artiste to worry whether it made sense, or meant anything, or had any connection whatsoever to the experience of real human beings. 'Cause to try to actually reflect real life or tell a real story is so cliché, right?

The truth (apparently lost on most adherents to this unfortunate genre) is that "indie" films have been around long enough to have their own catalog of clichés, and this movie is nothing but cliché, cliché on top of cliché with cliché garnish. It's like every character works at Tchotchky's, but instead of flair, each one has to wear fifteen pieces of cliché. Todd Solondz would think this was indie garbage.

I've seen reviews that praise this film's multitude of interesting characters. In fact, every scene is about the same person: the director. He seems to be constantly insisting how quirky, how indie, how profound he is. Well, anyone can write an eccentric character. What's difficult is to make an eccentric character believable as an inhabitant of planet Earth, an achievement the director does not even attempt. There are no back stories, no explanations for how these people became who they are or why they feel the way they do. It's just a pile of writer's invention, and we're supposed to be impressed--nay, moved by it. It's not moving, it's not funny, it's totally intellectually lazy, and wretchedly proud of itself.

The most hateful thing about movies like this is that their only goal (as far as I can tell) is to deceive. To deceive audiences, critics and festival-goers into thinking that the director is a profound and creative man, a complex individual whose scope of imagination is matched only by the intensity of his empathy. Baloney. This was not a story that was dying to get out, nor a reflection of deep seated passions, nor a portrait of hometown nostalgia. It was an exercise in narcissism by someone who treats the art form like his vanity table. But people buy it. The reviews are mostly good. The user comments on this thread are unfathomably adulatory. What can one say? People are gullible. And stuff like this intimidates them into thinking they liked it. I didn't. I hated it. Can you tell?

The cinematography was good.

Watching this movie was so tedious and laborious that I think I would have enjoyed a punch in the stomach far more. Now this is an indie movie that you've probably never heard of, and for good reason too, but pray that you stay lucky and never accidentally see it. Who knows, someone may break into your home, tie you and your family up, and force you to sit through it. Once is torture, more could be lethal.

This is like an un-funny version of Napoleon Dynamite... Except Napoleon Dynamite wasn't funny.

Do yourself a favor and avoid this movie. You'll thank me. And yourself. And which ever God you believe in.

I find few films truly memorable, but this is one I haven't been able to shake off. There is something disruptive about this film. The untidiness of the story together with the bright summer colors and low economic status of the characters gives the film a tone of reality. The oddity of the characters, their inexplicable choices, and supernatural events give the film a dream like quality. The film does an incredible job of playing with our value system. Things are stolen, lost, and killed, but nothing is permanent. The film does manage to resolve many of the subplots by the end, but this is mainly by inference. The nuclear power plant seems to interact with the people in the story via power lines and the electric car.