Relaxer

Cam gives his slacker brother Abbie one last challenge before he's kicked out. To beat Billy Mitchell at Pac Man. If he clears level 256 then he wins $100,000. Cam adds that he can not under any circumstance leave the couch. And if that's not bad enough, the Y2K apocalypse is on the horizon. As weeks go by he begins to deteriorate. Surreal, weird, and gross at times.

I was very much taken aback upon watching writer/director Joel Potrykus' previous film Buzzard. It's been a few years, but I remember appreciating it both as a great character study, as well as a love-letter to 80s and 90s pop culture (it was also very funny). I grew up in the 90s myself, and find my own nostalgia for that pre-smart phone, pre-internet period to be immense. When I read the premise of Potrykus' latest film Relaxer, I was naturally excited to see it.

Relaxer concerns woebegone slacker Abbie's inability to get off the couch. The film begins with his older brother Cam bullying him into completing a challenge involving drinking a certain amount of nebulous-looking milk, the successful completion of which Abbie places above, say, bathing or using a toilet. Cam disputes the successful completion of the dairy challenge and presents Abbie with a new one: conquering level 256 of Pac Man for a large monetary reward. Seemingly unable to stand up to his older brother or take care of his basic human needs, Abbie complies. The remainder of the film takes place exclusively in Abbie's disgusting apartment, where he is visited by some annoying friends who provide little relief to the situation. As the films continues, the absurdity level delightfully ramps up.

Even moreso than Buzzard, Relaxer harkens back to some dialogue heavy slacker films of yesteryear. I was reminded mostly of early Kevin Smith and Richard Linklater, partly for the geek culture reverie. There's also shades of Jim Jarmusch and Harmony Korine here.

Joshua Burge once again takes on the lead role, as he did in Buzzard. His droopy eyes and unusual appearance lend themselves well to these types of outsider roles, but that's not to take anything away from his acting chops. His understated performance nearly transcends the boredom of watching his one-note, arc-less character interact with other similar characters for an hour and a half. Alas, for a film that lives and dies on its dialogue, Relaxer isn't quite funny enough to negate the malaise. The film picked up some steam in its final act, but it felt too-little, too-late by then.

Unlike Buzzard, Abbie doesn't appear to be at odds with any internal struggle, other than completing whichever trivial challenge he's currently facing. Perhaps that Relaxer's point, and while authentic, doesn't make for a very entertaining film.

Qualms aside, I continue to appreciate Potrykus' unique vision, and eagerly await his next film.

Potrykus is one of the most talented and well known directors to come out of the West Michigan film scene. I haven't had a chance to see his first film "Ape" yet but his sophomore offering of "Buzzard" is a delightfully funny and rebellious workplace punk rock anthem for the everyman. "The Alchemist Cookbook" certainly caught some off guard with its change in tone from his previous work but it is a decent horror film with some really special moments in it.

Having seen both of these films, I was really primed to see some thing more than unique when I got to go to a special screening of "Relaxer," in conjunction with this years ArtPrize.

I didn't know anything about this film going in but within a minute the premise is being set coyly with a wink and a nod. Sure the challenges that Cam throws at Abbie are extreme and cruel but the idea that Abbie, or Joshua Burge, would take the ludicrous challenge to sit in one spot on the couch for six months seriously is even extreme enough that you can almost feel the director winking into the camera saying, "That's right. We ain't movin' and we ain't gonna cheat. We are doing' this."

The entire movie, one of the characters never moves their butt off their seat. This really impressed me. On the one hand, as a film maker I know that the grind of moving locations every day can really wear a crew down. Being at one set the whole time would sure be nice. But then again, I can imagine it might start dragging a bit after a while. Day after day in the same place. Clocking in and clocking out. I mean, half of us in this business do it because we dream of breaking out of that kind of routine.

That's where the movie is subtly brilliant, probably unintentionally, but if not, Kudos to you, Joel. Even the way that it gets made is a sort of commitment to break out of the normal, the thing that is holding us back. I have never gotten a chance to talk to Joel but I bet that even like the smallest of us film guys, he lament's that we can't work on the scale we want, for the rates we want, and with all the time we want.

We make sacrifices and before you know it we are back on the couch. Wasting the days into the new millennia. At the very least, watching this film made me want to fight the things that keep me down. They may not be as gross, or funny, or outlandish as in "Relaxer," but they still need to be taken down.

This achieves a transcendence on the couch. It is the same mythos of the heroes journey. Eerie as he reaches there, we are suddenly viewing this film no different than Lord of the Rings or The Odyssey. It delves into Y2K, and we get that once in a while, the Mayan Prophecy, etc...

Comedically, this is the natural escalation of post-irony: we go so far into self-reference, the illusion would be breached. The mystery of those 8-bit games is they are so much larger than the screen because they exclusively operate in our imaginations due to limited graphics and technology.

I often wondered there must be untold secrets in those 8bit worlds, and I was not alone...new secrets are being found, new records achieved. It's as if the mathematical limitations of the code are constantly tested in our attempts to surpass the limitations of material existence.

The thing is Nietzschean as it explores the human impulse to break the code. By pioneering and stretching the spectrum of irony, one is constantly surprised to find there are outcomes.

It challenges Warhol that everything has been done. Evolution demands things be done.

It barely ever shows the game, it doesn't delve into the challenge. It isn't interested in the science fiction of it. The film is everything but the film. It just shows him on the couch. A theater of the slacker, where even the genX slacker is now an archetype from history.

Then in the process of finding the secrets of the game, he becomes the game. The One. The post-irony often lands at changing history because this is the current day digital frame that accommodates us-anywhere we take it, it accommodates-our narcissism has become the world entire. In indulging this, it somehow grants millennials and post-millennials outcomes, saying whatever is the economic, cultural, or societal collapse, everything is going according to plan.

Not sure what to make of this movie journey. Is it about doing inconsequential nothings in life; addictions/obsessions; submission to others; sitting out the coming Y2K event of supposed doom when tech can't handle a date change. Anyway, totally filmed in a slimy, grungy, filthy small one room apt. we have one brother confined to his couch (by orders of older bro who appears sporadicaly) telling him to periodically drink from a gallon of what is probably soured milk while trying to break a Pac-man video game record of level 256. As time goes by he sits & ages, mostly alone, not going to an actual bathroom; somehow surviving on small scraps of disgusting food, as the game plays on in the background.