The Four Corners of Nowhere

1995
1h 50m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

Ingrid Eggertsen in The Four Corners of Nowhere (1995)

Duncan, a philosophical nomad hitchhiking across America, grabs a ride to Ann Arbor, Michigan from Toad - a performance artist and purple leisure slacks enthusiast from the suburbs. Toad has... Read allDuncan, a philosophical nomad hitchhiking across America, grabs a ride to Ann Arbor, Michigan from Toad - a performance artist and purple leisure slacks enthusiast from the suburbs. Toad has recently left his home town to begin a new life in Ann Arbor where his co-dependent, folk... Read allDuncan, a philosophical nomad hitchhiking across America, grabs a ride to Ann Arbor, Michigan from Toad - a performance artist and purple leisure slacks enthusiast from the suburbs. Toad has recently left his home town to begin a new life in Ann Arbor where his co-dependent, folk-singing sister Jenny lives with her verbally abusive fiancé, a law student named Calvin. ... Read all

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.4/10

196

YOUR RATING

13User reviews

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 1 nomination total

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User reviews13

7.4196

Featured reviews

10bodhidharma

Great Low Key Film

It's hard not to compare Four Corners to the Breakfast Club. The movie is driven by characters and dialogue. I first saw this on the Sundance Channel and I had to tape it the next time it was on. Since then I must have watched it 20 or 30 times. The movie seems alternately funny, weird, sad, happy, angry and puzzling. Some of the characters seem like stereotypes but they all change over the course of the film. This is definitely too good for Hollywood.

10nacton42

alternately hilarious and piercingly perceptive; most accurate portrayal of the "gen-X" mentality that I've ever seen

"So when I made her a mix tape with the mandatory number of Indigo Girls songs, I was thinking we'd get it on, y'know?" The above comment from the character Toad is a prime example of writer/director Steve Chbosky's blend of wit and cultural satire displayed in The Four Corners Of Nowhere. Just when you think the film will be a heavy-handed sermon on the lost feelings of this generation, it switches to a stream of sparkling satire on everything from activism to psychotherapy to douche, and back again. For those of you who thought no one read what you read while feeling the way you felt, Chbosky's perfectly balanced film will make you feel you're not alone in either area. Its plot centers on Duncan, a Rimbaud-quoting hitchhiker who visits place after place until he's "literally seen the whole world." In a visit to Ann Arbor, Michigan, he encounters Toad, a surprisingly talented but burned-out performance artist; Julian, the sociopathic college DJ; Stoned (the name says it all); Squeeze, a genius in disguise as the submissive girlfriend of a Kafka-reading painter; and a host of other characters who combine to illustrate Chbosky's ultimately uplifting and accurate film. This one is worth seeing by all means, if only for the reassurance you feel after it's over that you, too, aren't just another fad.

10nacton42

Wonderfully-written tongue-in-cheek commentary on "Generation X''s trappings and frustrations

I grew up on The Breakfast Club. So when a film finally did as good a job at following a number of disparate characters as TBC did, I rejoiced that independent film might finally be coming to life again. Steve Chbosky's introspective and on-the-mark gem about a group of so-called drifters in Ann Arbor sets up our expectations about the seemingly one-dimensional characters and then knocks them down in an accurate parallel to what the current generation has been doing to society for years. Chbosky's screenplay is alternately piercingly perceptive and laugh-out-loud funny, and just when you think one extreme will dominate the rest of the film Chbosky switches from emotional discourse to one-liners about the Indigo Girls or vice versa. The story centers on Duncan, a nomad who passes through Ann Arbor for a week or so, only to leave lasting impressions on aspiring folk singer Jenny and surprisingly competent burned-out performance artist Toad. Along the way Duncan (and vicariously the viewing audience) gains insight into human nature, interacts with a frustrated DJ who periodically spouts nuggets of wisdom between deadly accurate monologues about puberty for women, and makes a highly symbolic collage of the U.S., only to teach his friends (and us) that in the end, only we determine if we are just another fad.

cvalhouli

impressed by Boston screening

I had the pleasure of catching this film in its limited theatrical release in Boston some years ago, and I remember it as one of the more impressive independent films. Wry dialogue and beautiful pacing allow the film to follow several groups of characters whose stories resolve and combine beautifully by the end. Looking forward to seeing more work from this team.

electrobaboon

Eric Vesbit once saved me from a flaming bus. I appreciate that.

At its core, Four Corners is a sweet story about artistic pretension, personal fulfillment, and love, in that order. The characters, all college-age and located in college-town Ann Arbor, Michigan, are, at first glance, stereotypes and exaggerations of the students and hangers-on typically found in such burgs. Uniformly white and well-heeled, they read too much Dostoyevsky, worry about the tribulations of the American Indian, and smoke a lot of weed. They cull angst where there need not be any and do a hell of a lot of kvetching.

In other words, they're all the worst sort of people alive. However, writer/director Steve Chbosky is aware of this, and he does a great job of finding the human beings buried beneath these stereotypes and, slowly but surely, bringing them to the surface as the story progresses, having fun with the stereotypes all the while. As the disparate stories of the principal characters arc and come together through the action or inaction of the secondary (read: functional) characters, the movie's tongue falls quickly out of its cheek and it finds a real voice and message in its conclusion.

Although I personally have little sympathy for the faux-problems of silver spoon rich kids like the ones in this movie, Chbosky and the excellent cast do a great job of raising them from the deadness of stereotypicality, and, when all was said & done, I walked away from the movie a little bit happier than when I'd started it.

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Quotes
Duncan: I think it all started with the Declaration of Independence; the idea that we had the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That pursuit is what took America from the revolution to the computer age in 200 years. But the progress has come at a price. The obvious being the people that were exploited to make it possible; the not so obvious being us, the first group of people that were given no obvious frontiers to conquer. We hear stories about the good old days that don't seem to apply anymore. It's a generation gap that leaves us without role models. But the bright side is that without role models, there are no roles. Thirty years ago that girl you talked to probably would have married her fiancé because it would have been expected, but she ended up leaving him. Maybe that's what the 60's were all about... getting rid of the roles. But what do we replace them with? Without any guidance, the choices become overwhelming. Sometimes it just makes everything feel hopeless. So we destroy our bodies in the search of an ideal. Try to salvage relationships that don't work. We feel we must do something, instead of doing something that we feel. It is the prison of self-imposed momentum, and the sad part is that we get used to it. It reminds me of a song I heard the other day. It's called "Nowhere Fast." But the people I have met here have shown me another side of Nowhere. They've pointed out the beautiful irony that stagnation makes it easy to stop and smell the roses, if we just let it. What would we be if we had nothing to rebel against? Well we could finally be ourselves, the first group of people who stopped looking for the answers long enough to appreciate the questions. And all we have to do is to make our own Declaration of Independence. We can embrace the right to life and liberty by simply realizing that happiness exists... not to pursue, but to accept. After that, the only challenge would be to make sure, with the rest of our lives, that we weren't just another fad.