Desolation Angels

Desolation Angels, a film presented by Jonathan Demme and Barbet Schroeder, tried to alert us decades ago to issues of date and consent. A film predicting the #MeToo movement, and a big-time festival winner at both Telluride and Toronto! It also features another great starring role for actor Michael Rodrick.

I am astonished (and a little outraged) at the critical raves this unexceptional film has garnered.

The film is long and boring, frankly. The primary characters are somewhat generic and angsty. Much of the action feels naturalistic but also unfocused and improvised in a way that recalls the worst of the mumblecore films -- I primarily recall an interminable scene of the protagonist yelling and pounding on his nemesis' door over and over (with the nemesis never opening it, aka nothing happens). Both my GF and I anticipated the twist that happens with the protagonist's primary revenge scheme. It's terribly one-note: the entire movie centers around one conflict, with the no other threads, themes, or subplots to speak of. And the characters and their plights never seemed really compelling.

It is a debut film, and from '95. I do appreciate the tone of semi- realism and the strength of conviction in a lot of the acting. There's also a nihilistic approach that shows narrative maturity, although the ending really isn't anything to write Shakespeare about. It has a lot of the components of a good film.

Overall, I wish I'd skipped it. It's an admirable achievement esp to have completed this movie without digital tools, but movies of this caliber are commonplace today. It is far from "blazingly provocative" (Rolling Stone) and "a drama of extraordinary power" (Chicago Tribune). To see such raves lavished on this film only emphasizes the subjective nature of these critics and the way good movies (especially foreign ones) are ignored.

A drama, a comedy?. There's a bit of both in this film. It starts out quite seriously, but as it goes on, the filmmakers appear to be commenting on and making fun of a certain macho attitude that is all too prevalent in our society. The plot is simple: a guy's girl is supposedly raped by his best pal, and each side's account of what transpired is entirely different, so we can't accept either as the final truth. But that's not what's important here: the main plot line is the escalating feud between the two friends and how they immaturely try to solve their differences: with violence, of course. This is when the film turns hilarious, as all the vengeful plotting goes totally out of whack. Despite its one-note premise, the film is never boring, it's realistically acted and scripted and it leaves us questioning the wrongheaded social attitudes that are passed from one generation to another and it does so while keeping us entertained. Highly recommended.

This is a difficult movie to explain because so much of it is about a variety of human flaws that have nothing to do with date rape, per se. The victim is unwilling to press charges, the rapist is still welcome in her circle of friends, and her boyfriend is stymied because everybody is treating him worse than the bad guy, just to begin with. It's incredible that this unfolds in such a realistic and daring way. In some ways, the victim is the one you'll understand the least, and the rapist has emotional issues that make his crime pale by comparison. There's a pivotal scene between the lead actors in a kitchen that is as filled with potential trauma as the game of Russian Roulette in The Deer Hunter. A great modern tragedy.