The Rambler

I watched this film last night and had no idea what to expect to be honest. I would normally read a review before I watch but I just played it.

My thoughts. A lot of previous posters try to understand what the meaning to this film is. To me it's very apparent what the meaning is. You know this at the very start of the film and throughout.

This film is very dark in places and although some of the scenes can be regarded as funny they can also be rather disturbing all at the same time.

Watch it if you dare that's all I say. And midnight as another poster pointed out is probably the best time.

I was one of about 15 people who walked out of this movie during a screening at The Sarasota Film Festival. I give movies a lot of rope to hang themselves and this one hung itself; shot itself through the head and set itself on fire. Oh, wait, maybe I'm flashing back to the movie. BTW...you can't spoil what's already rotten. If you don't have something to say, shut up could be the simple review of this ridiculous piece of junk. The next time I want a similar experience I'll eat a raw egg with shards of glass in it. I can't figure out how two good actors didn't have a sense of the disaster they were part of but I guess you don't know until it's edited.

It has been a few weeks since I viewed this film at its Sundance Premiere. Even now, I am still unsure about how to feel towards it. The plot consists of a man traveling along a desert highway, and the misadventures and people he encounters along the way. There are moments of brilliance, when the dialogue and scenes are laced with dark humor, that make for quite entertaining viewing. The hilarious early scenes with the Rambler and the Scientist who picks him up are among the best in the film. However, there are also moments that feel out of place, and just plain bizarre. The tone is shifty, and it's when the mood changes from a trippy, darkly funny road movie to full-on horror that the film loses some of its momentum.

After the screening, there was a brief Q & A with the writer/director. I found it funny that when asked if there was a deeper meaning behind some of the events in the film, he said no, it is what it is. I guess what matters is the journey, not the destination. And what a mind-boggling, surreal journey it is.

Above all, this film is surreal, and it is sure to polarize viewers. This film is not for everyone, but if you are a fan of dark humor, horror, surrealism, and the bizarre, you are in for a treat. A great midnight movie.

7/10

It is for those who think that David Lynch makes far too few Movies, or for those that haunt Film Festivals and Midnight Movie Screenings, or the Counter-Culture Hordes who abhor anything from Mainstream Hollywood. That is to say this is one of the Weird Ones.

It is incomprehensible and defies Classification. It is Bizarre and proud of it. Disturbing imagery abound and Ugly People populate this Misanthropic Movie and it has no pretensions other than to make you squirm and squabble about its Meaning (it has none other than what you provide).

Definitely worth a watch for those interested in Underground Cinema and Films that inhabit the edge of the Universe defiling anyone who dares venture into proximity. It cannot be explained and doesn't attempt to offer any coherent Story. This is an exercise in Art and is filled with nothing more than Imagery and Sound to elicit a response. The Dialog is so strange that it really has nothing to do with anything.

There is one exchange between a Cab Driver and The Rambler that is directed at those who will hate this Movie. Cabbie: "Have you seen the Movie Frankenstein?" Rambler: "No." Cabbie: "I Love that Movie, but I would have made it in Color".

I can't picture a single festival screening of Calvin Reeder's The Rambler that wouldn't result in at least half the crowd walking out in revulsion. There's just no way to put it lightly when describing the alienating, severely soul-disturbing kind of sickly atmosphere that hangs over the entire film like a radioactive blanket of surreal dread. The DVD cover barely suggests the beyond Lynchian, out to lunch, bugfvck nuts events which unfold, and instead hints toward a western with vaguely horror themed aspects. Couldn't be more different than that. The conventional elements like plot and the theme of Western are dimly present, shaky railroad tracks for a train that careens straight into the subconscious of bizarro world, some of what we see even too messed up and disassociate for the hardiest of cultist buffs. Few films are able to capture the purely illogical and disjointed feeling of a dream, but this one nails it scarily well. Sentences don't match responses, human behaviour is terrifyingly devoid of inhibitions, events repeat and come out of nowhere, and we really and truly feel lost, removed and detached from any kind of rational thought or action. Now the film doesn't outright announce that it's all a dream, save for a few hints embedded in the story, but it sure felt like one long nightmare to me, evoking psychological feelings which words really can't describe. Dermot Mulroney does a 'Man with no name routine' as a vacant ex con who is released from prison and blows back into his one horse trailer park town. He does indeed have no name, now that I think of it, and is only ever referred to as The Rambler. Upon returning, he finds his volatile girlfriend (Natasha Lyonne) has taken up with another man, and no one seems to want him around anymore. Time to hit the road, he figures, sauntering out into the acrid desolation of the southwest in a dead cool opening credits scene set to Terry Allen's Red Bird, one of my favourite twangy tunes. From there it gets hard to describe, comprehend and stomach. He's off in some John Waters style twilight zone of very unsettling characters, saying and doing things that make little sense and get increasingly shocking and vulgar. A mysterious girl (Lindsay Pulsipher) weaves in and out of the story and seems to be the only one besides him who is remotely coherent. A crackpot doctor (James Cady) shows him an extremely defective device that is supposed to look into people's dreams. There's ugly, misanthropic fiends running all about with nothing to say other than loosely strung together verbal diarrhea, and a constant nauseating film of unease over everything. I've read reviews wailing about how this film has less than nothing to say, and should have shut it's mouth. But that's the point to a nightmare; it doesn't teach, enlighten or otherwise change us in any way other than to give our sense of dread a workout and provoke a cold sweat. Similarly, the film simply is there to scare, to induce the gag reflex and doesn't strive for anything else, and in that sense it's pure, primal and honest about it's intentions. The very definition of not for everyone, this will even put off bands of counter culture cinephiles who scoff at anything mainstream. Deliberately vile, constantly off its rocker and so far beyond the event horizon where bizarre ends and something truly indescribable begins, The Rambler will shake the soul out of anyone who claims to have seen it all. You have been warned.