Bondage

So I work in this crazy business, the film business. And the word I've been hearing is that it is a "teenage Taxi Driver". So, I got my hands on a copy of the script. I can see why people are comparing it so much to "Garden State" because of it's sort of coming-of-age appeal. However, "Girl, Interrupted" was slow and introspective while I found this script to be a real page-turner. The story was non-traditional and very unpredictable. I also get the comment that somebody made about "Trainspotting". I can see that. However, the "Taxi Driver" comparison is the one that, to me, makes the most sense. It deals with a person who has been through too much, seen too much, and the only way they can express it is through rage, which comes out when you least expect it. At least, I never saw it coming. Nor could I have ever predicted the end for that matter. This movie is in competition at South By Southwest this year and I wish them all the luck in the world. The script reads confidently, like a movie that should be seen.

I was lucky enough to see the world premiere of this film at SXSW just the other day. I knew little about the movie but wanted at least one screening under my belt at an actual film festival. The screening was in the morning, so I ended up talking about it to everyone around me the rest of the day. It's been the highlight of the trip, other than meeting the cast and director.

In the opening moments of Bondage, a first time feature for directer Eric Allen Bell, young Charlie Edwards is arrested for vandalism and arson. The corrections industry in California is uninterested in addressing his emotional trauma; they just want to store his body for the course of his four year sentence. To escape the harassment of the gangs and the corrections officers, Charlie feigns insanity and moves to a psychiatric hospital. The doctors push drugs on top of drugs to nullify everything in Charlie's world. And all Charlie wants for himself is to live his own life without the oppressive rules made up by other people.

The narrative flexes the sequence of events, seamlessly incorporating past, present and future moments into a coherent storyline. There are moments when the film explores the tactics Charlie's parents would use to enforce their standards of control, including a particularly harrowing sequence where they drag him into the bathroom and force his hands to scrub out the tub as he pleads for mercy. A character late in the film makes this observation: parents who box their teen into a corner with rules and emotional manipulation are so shocked when he comes out fighting, it's no wonder they call him crazy.

Michael Angarano in the role of Charlie had a formidable task carrying the film, and he excels at giving the character a sense of tragedy. By mere body posture and softly spoken lines, we see Charlie as a damaged and frightened person, who understands little about why he's so deeply interred in a system that cares little for his well being. Illeana Douglas and Eric Lange as Charlie's parents are haunting with the complexity they bring to what is essentially the forces of old and evil. The film does not forgive them, but it creates in them real people, who do both wonderful and terrible things. Just like Charlie. It would be an oversight not to mention the adorable Mae Whitman as another product of an abusive home. Her character may have the least amount of screen time, but her impact on the film's final thirty minutes could be felt for hours after the credits rolled.

There's a famous poem by Phil Larkin called "This Be The Verse." It ran through my head the entire time I sat in the theater. IMDb won't allow me to post it here due to the expletives it contains, but it's not hard to find after a quick search on Google.

Go see this movie.

• Jon

Bondage is not about the strange sex acts that happen in New York City's underground brothels; it is a light, indie study of being held down by those around you which prevent you from developing your own sense of character and humanity. As interesting as that could've been, Bondage is an absolute disappointment.

Read: will be picked up by a small distribution company and make a killing in hip indie markets.

The film is about young Charlie who lives in a dysfunctional household with terrible parents and a 15 year old kid brother who loves to push him into doing things he doesn't want to. In order to get out of the house, the two lie to their parents about going to church and end up at a park smoking pot and drinking beer. After sneaking out one night with his brother to vandalize the school, Charlie is caught by the police and sent to Juvenile hall. His brother manages to get off, and Charlie doesn't rat him out. The rest of the film focuses on Charlie's "horrific" experiences in prison and his eventual coming of age.

In retrospect, Bondage has a lot of great things going for it. Director Eric Allen Bell somehow picked the perfect cast of no-name actors to comprise his film, and they are all excellent. Particularly fantastic is young Michael Angarano as Charlie, I'm sure if this gets ample distribution that we'll be seeing a lot more from young Michael. But Bell's poor script chokes the potential out of the film's throat. All of the actors and themes are downright wasted here, as Bell would love for us to take his themes more seriously, but can't seem to shake the silly adolescent humor. Bondage is another modern American independent film that has no idea what subtlety means. I don't need a two minute monologue by the protagonist's love interest telling us that he is a good person who just hasn't been given a chance. Stop beating the audience over the head already; we aren't stupid.

Bell's film is the most recent case of the indie film cliché. The most recent serving of Garden State/Thumbsucker etc. wave of films, Bondage features everything from poorly placed flashbacks to flashy split screen editing and a terribly obvious soundtrack. One scene which made me and the woman to my right crack up, finds Charlie placed in solitary confinement with a Death Cab song playing over it. If the film isn't screaming, "COME ON, PLEASE LIKE ME!" it's crying, "COME ON, FEEL SORRY FOR MY CHARACTERS!" Bell's film is at times very funny and can be surprisingly entertaining. But for what director Eric Allen Bell was hoping to achieve in his conveyance of themes, he fails miserably. The tonally inconsistent first feature effort from the director should be a stepping stone on which to learn by, and improve next time. This film is noticeably better than other first timer's films, it's just so scattershot and obvious that I can't recommend it.

I think that is a more accurate summary because, even though "Girl, Interrupted does deal with someone who is institutionalized, "Bondage" has nothing in common with the style or feeling of that film. It has more of a pace and an edge like "Trainspotting" in my opinion.

This movie is so not the kind of thing you would see coming from a major studio. It isn't lame or predictable and it doesn't talk down to it's audience. This reminds me more of the kinds of stories that were being made into movies like in the late sixties and early seventies. I guess what I'm saying is it has like more of a soul.

Also the guy who wrote it and directed it and raised all the money to make it also lived it. And that has a power to it all its own.

This movie is totally original, and for that reason I think a lot of cynical types won't get it at all. I just know that the packed house at the premiere was filled with people who did get it. They loved the movie probably for the same reasons I do - I could relate.

I've never been through the experiences that the protagonist Charlie Edwards has, but I have certainly felt trapped and like my life was no longer my own. I think we all have and in the end I think that is why "Bondage" succeeeds.

I saw this movie while I was at South By Southwest. What particularly intrigued me about it was the fact that asked a lot of questions and answered none of them. You rarely see that anymore. Most movies, even the independents, will give the audience some sense that all of the questions have answers and that the conclusions to people's dilemmas are satisfying to anyone sitting in a dark room eating popcorn.

Don't get me wrong, I like going to the movies and I like a lot of what I see. I work a 9 to 5 job and a lot of the time I just want to watch mindless comforting good old fashioned entertainment.

But that's not all I want to see. Somethings I enjoy a movie with characters and themes that I can empathathize with on some level, a story that is making observations that no one else is making. Bondage did that for me. It showed a different side of the American dream. It's a movie that dares to show what happens when everything breaks down, who pays (the next generation) and how that cycle perpetuates itself.

That alone is interesting enough, but it also serves as an allegory for what is happening in the world today. I'm not an independent film snob by any means. Most of them are boring actually. I really liked Titanic when it came out. But what I liked about Titanic, besides all of the obvious stuff, is what I like about Bondage. Both movies are saying something bigger than what they appear to be saying.

Titanic says that if we get big enough and arrogant enough we will become vulnerable and this could sink the whole ship. If the ship sinks, most of us are going down. Clearly that movie is talking about America.

Bondage does the same thing, but in a much different way. Bondage not only gets into the private lives, yearnings, secrets, regrets and longings (to be free of something) of each of its characters, but it also seems to be asking a much bigger question. And I think that question is what makes it almost a cautionary tale (like Titanic). The question is, "What are we, as a society of civilized people, doing here? What are we ignoring? What is the loose thread that can unravel the whole garment?" I found the interview with the director and cast very interesting at the end because the director, who also wrote the script, was talking about this. It was as though the movie had set out to take the temperature of an entire nation and hold up the thermometer. I will not be surprised, when this movie is in theaters, if some people look at that thermometer and don't like what they see. I've read some of these posts and I can already see the desire on the part of some people to attempt to kill the messenger because they don't like the news he brings.

Bondage is a story worth telling and it is well told. It is rich and entertaining, darkly funny at times, unbearably sad at others, engaging the whole way and sometimes even hard to watch. If it were out, I would have gone to see it again by now. It's just one of those films that stays with you.