Giantjott

Charles Bukowski once wrote, "Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must live." This is how I feel about the people who didn't appreciate this film. Not the monosyllabic morons decrying the film for wasting their precious time - like ants to a picnic, those types will always heap vitriol onto any art house film worth its salt. Rather, I mean the supposed cinephiles...those who think that when this movie loses them, it's because it took a wrong turn. Sorry to say, but for all their self-importance, there are those out there, like myself, who have discovered another way of approaching cinema - maybe we're crazy, but it includes recognizing the genius of this film.

It's easy to see why critics didn't like it. Unlike the director's last output, she doesn't couch her visual style in the time-honored techniques of serious cinema. I loved A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, and in fact, the two films share a lot in common (fictional world of outsiders, injury to main character in the first act, furry critter ties everything together), but Amirpour was obviously working with a much smaller budget then and remained in the established realm of student art film. It worked masterfully, winning her awards and praise and the chance to direct a much bigger production. But rather than borrow once more from the pre-approved visual styles of Jim Jarmusch and David Lynch, Amirpour instead leans into her love of desert landscapes as she takes on the post-apocalyptic genre (Mad Max, A Boy and His Dog, Tank Girl).

And yet, the tone of the film is much the same - long cuts, gorgeous stylized shots, in-camera effects. In a word, the storytelling is extremely visual, in both films. But for some reason, this style is easier to swallow when it looks like you're making the most of a small budget. It especially works well when there are no recognizable faces, as people tend to expect a certain amount of dialogue or a certain style of acting or a certain length of screen time from celebrity actors. Much like McConaughey in The Beach Bum, casting Keanu Reeves, Jason Momoa, and Jim Carrey seem to have elicited the wrong expectations from its viewers. It definitely attracted too many viewers from the mainstream (accounting for the endless dribble about the slow pacing in a large number of the reviews), and for that reason the low score is to be expected. But those viewers ought to be aware - Fury Road isn't the only way to make a film about the desert. Hell, it's not even the only way to make a Mad Max film. The Road Warrior, for instance, had a much slower pace, and it is perhaps for this reason that so many cinephiles consider it to be the best of the series. Slow pacing and desert landscapes go together like peanut butter and milk. Lawrence of Arabia, anyone? Walkabout? Of course, I'm also a huge fan of Gus Van Sant's Gerry, which I imagine had a lot of cinephilic fanboys looking for the exit.

The problem boils down to this - the more cinema knowledge you have, the more difficult it can be to leave your preconceptions at the door. But as someone just as interested in finding new talent as in venerating the established veterans, I find this is a necessary precondition to enjoying the bold, original work of tomorrow's cinematic innovators. The Bad Batch is a genre movie, a western, and Amirpour knows this, employing various genre tropes, albeit in slightly new ways. She doesn't give us an obvious big bad, or a final showdown - she doesn't employ Mexican standoffs, or bounty hunters, or even gun fights. She does, however, give us a story of survivalism (both man vs. wild and man vs. man), cannibalism, kidnapping, drug addiction, forced labor, indentured service, exploitation, redemption, personal responsibility and trust, which, I don't know about you, but that sounds like a lot of juicy story content (I saw one reviewer actually list the events of the film in a similarly bulleted fashion, attempting to illustrate how empty the script was, but inadvertently listing several major themes with emotional weight and human interest). And honestly, the pacing isn't even that slow, especially when compared to films like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Solaris (outer space is, after all, a kind of desert). It's more likely that this film's detractors are reacting to the meandering plot. And it's true - the story is told in a way that makes it difficult to recall the details of the plot afterward, especially the chronology of events. It is, at times, surrealistic, even hallucinogenic. At other times the events of the film rely heavily on happenstance. Without each scene leading directly and obviously into the events of the next, it can sometimes feel like you, the viewer, are drifting through various unconnected episodes, unguided by an overarching plot. And perhaps that's true. But who said that's a bad thing? Actually, it seems like a very appropriate storytelling device, given the setting. But alas, it seems the success of Fury Road has monopolized audience expectations when it comes to films made in the desert. Don't look for that movie here. Rather, if you have any expectations at all, they should be based upon the director's debut, her revisionist approach to genre, and maybe the broader history of quirky desert films, such as A Boy and His Dog. And, for the love of God, leave behind any preconceived notions based upon the cast. They're actors, after all. They deserve a chance to show you something different.