The Blackout

Abel Ferrara to me is the most interesting and uncompromising American director working in movies today. He has had a career like no other, and one that even his fans would have to admit has been extremely uneven. For every brilliant movie he has made ('Bad Lieutenant', 'King Of New York') he has made some stinkers ('Fear City', 'Dangerous Game'). 'The Blackout' is somewhere between the two, half compelling, half embarrassing failure. Newcomers to Ferrara's work should probably avoid this one until they have sampled a few of his more successful works. One of my big problems with this movie is the casting of Matthew Modine. Modine is a pretty good actor but doesn't have the acting chops (of say, Harvey Keitel or Christopher Walken, previous Ferrara leading men) to really make his role here totally convincing. Modine plays a young Hollywood star who is out of control on booze, sex and drugs ala the real life escapades of Christian Slater or Robert Downey, Jr. A few of his scenes were excellent, but overall I just didn't believe him. The rest of the cast is a little shaky too. Beatrice Dalle ('Betty Blue') and supermodel Claudia Schiffer are both adequate but not that compelling, and Dennis Hopper, who I am a major fan of, just hams it up in what my friends call a "hey, maaaaaaan!" role. It was good to see Steven Bauer ('Scarface') in this movie, an underrated actor who hasn't received the roles he deserves, but then he is only given a few lines, and then he's gone. I'm also really taken by the beautiful Sarah Lassez who starred in Gregg Araki's weird and wonderful 'Nowhere', released the same year as this. I was hoping she became a major star, but sadly it looks like that isn't going to happen. 'The Blackout' is by no means Ferrara's worst movie but it is also far from his best. As uneven as it is fans will get enough out of it to justify watching it, but he can do so much better than this! A very frustrating movie this one.

Back in the hazy days of grip/electric life, I got a call to work as the BB Grip on my 2nd (and last) Abel Ferrara film - "The Blackout". I accepted the gig with one non-negotiable caveat - I would never be willing to enter what I term "the meat grinder" (defined as any space within 150 feet of the madman auteur). "The Blackout" IS Abel Ferrara....albeit a PG-13 version. In a sense, the experience of making the film was an act of performance art...art lived as actual "life" or perhaps life lived as a Bosch nightmare...on the one hand, it was genius; on the other, pure madness. What remains is a snippet of documentary into the soul of AF.

No one can make guilt look as beautiful as Abel Ferrara. In 'The Blackout' he drags you down into a mud of obsession, self-loathing and substance-abuse, showing you that anxiety can be a trip in itself. The timeline is torn and bent out of shape, and it feels like half the movie is a flashback. Combine that with several layers of superimposed tripping and artistic handheld video footage of erotic dancers and you have something resembling 'The Blackout'. The acting is almost as excellent as the direction. Matthew Modine plays surprisingly well as the tortured Hollywood actor, and both Beatrice Dalle and Claudia Schiffer play their (albeit flat) characters flawlessly. I feel however that Dennis Hopper has started regurgitating what has become his only personality, and it wears thin. I usually love his performance, but in this film I could have done without him. Some will stress the need for a clearly defined plot, thereby completely dismissing efforts like this. A shame, since Ferrara is one of the few directors who can convincingly create a view into the depths of human depravation. The film is filled with great visuals, and carries a very recognizable Ferrara-look, feel and theme.

We're all stuck with narrow selves through the day, doing our best to mind our part in the noisy, incoherent narrative of life, organizing a myriad worries with one eye at the clock. At nights however, some nights, we dream, have passionate sex or watch truly mind-bending movies, drawing fresh water from the well of deep, mysterious non-self which is the great dancefloor where lovers meet their dragon.

So here's a film about a man haunted by a half-remembered night from his past, who wakes up inside a dream to find himself. The film begins and ends with shots of the protagonist in his own primordial sea, the sea of clarity and dissolved self. He is a famous actor, to stress the roles and guises of that weekday showbiz self we carry with us everywhere. A lot of time is spent around film sets and cameras.

The film is split in two very clear halves, a usual trope of films about memory since Vertigo; the long, blurry Miami night of sexual obsession and going back 18 months later. Overt drugging and boozing insert the dazedness of mind. The meta-aspects of the work involving a sex video being made and 'looking back' through cameras are thin and obvious. And Ferrara's attempt at a script-less improvised feel among the actors does not pan out in the least, not solely Modine's fault this.

My guess is that it does not pan out because Ferrara is not a genuinely curious, patient person like Altman who takes pleasure in the tentative brushing of characters, Ferrara is eager to get to the bleeding soul. I don't have to reach out to his other films to confirm this, here's a film about yearnings but only as acknowledged through an overbearing sense of misery and self-pity.

The obvious self-reference. The emotional bluntness. The shouting and partying as some acidic edge. These are all the same, short narrative distance away from the viewer. The film can be described as David Lynch films Le Mepris but all that French, Godardian baggage are as cumbersome now as thirty years prior. So in narrative terms, it is a modest failure.

And yet I recommend this to you on its power to enchant with its visual fabrics. There are all sorts of those:

1) the sex video as in-sight of our guy's hallucinative desires, and grainy handcamera footage as memory, fixing the mind. Dennis Hopper anchors this part as director, channeling both his Blue Velvet and Last Movie chaotic selves. 2) raw, cutting intimacy around the lovely Dalle. 3) warm coziness in New York, with smart usage of Claudia Schiffer as token of bloodless normalcy. 4) the b/w, Nouvelle Vague- inspired interlude at the beach.

You may settle in one or more of those. I settle in the Miami reverie, not the pleasure-seeking itself but those fleeting drive-by shots of nightlife and cloudy views from balconies, the gauzy loss of self and story. Marvelous, marvelous mood. If you mute the drama, it can sink into you.

It takes a while to get into the movie's mood - Modine's druggy trawl through a razor-sharp Miami is not very well differentiated despite Ferrara's excellent handling, teetering at the edge of surrender to the prevailing decadence but always retaining a distinct alienation and fascinated disgust. Later on the style becomes more tightly formal and controlled, befitting Modine's cleared up state, and Ferrara's portrayal of his obsession and disquietude is very effective in a more conventionally expositional way. Towards the end the mechanics of the ultimate revelation really take over, but Hopper's final long profane shouting fit at Modine after he learns the truth is too hard-hitting to be set aside, and the high-risk final image is oddly touching - the movie is a plausible account of a true lost soul grappling for stability in a world of temptation and internal darkness, with neat (albeit stunt) casting.