Santa Fe

Much like its main character, this movie lacks focus. It could never come to terms with what genre of movie it wanted to be. Screwball comedy? Satire? Chic flick? None of bothered me except the fact that it seemed that the screenwriters have never actually read a book by the philosophers that they namedrop continually. This is so typical of many of the films that try so hard to be "intelligent". Just because you have a camera and get invited to a couple of B list parties in Hollywood that does not make you intelligent. Come on guys, write about something that you know about or at least do a little research. Then there is the fact that the movie tried to be funny, but failed miserably. To me nothing is as much fun as a small child with a cute brain injury. But that is nothing compared with setting up a comedy with that most hilarious of events, the mass death of a whole group of fellow human beings. I know that I sat in front of the TV unable to control my laughter after Jonestown and Waco.

I read this as a story that tries to demonstrate a simple model of mental illness. To me it speaks in sign language, but it is a straight forward language.

Another story that used such language was maybe Donnie Darko, but a lot of the ingredients there, if one was to find something helpful to such as Donnie, were upside down, near impossible for a tied up individual to be able find as helpful. The commentary on the D C version of Donnie is interesting but to me it is fantasy fiction. True, Donnie and his father are much more heavily chained than the people in Santa Fe. That could be why the sign language there feels hidden.

*

An important hidden ingredient with this and such as Donnie Darko 2001+ and The Ballad Of Jack And Rose 2004 could be error correction pressures generating increased error. That defining these stories.

Here, if I read between the lines, most of this story is due to that. His attempts to regain his path, all the flow and detail of that, including the marriage of the Mayor. I overdo it.

In this particular story the error correction finally leads towards positive results. True, there is near disaster all along the way. With Donnie and his dad and Jack and Rose they need help to - firmer ground? - via a better path. They have an urgent need for firmer ground. Big babies can have a problem.

*

I understand, a guess, that the UK is trying to solve the problem of big babies. A national cleansing. Since around 2003 the streets seem a lot cleaner as far as obvious human debris is concerned. I see that from the debris side so I do not notice all that much, I notice a lot of pressure for which there is 'no hiding place' and a lot of it seems official or accepted by officialdom. I no longer can read the local newspaper very often, but the issue of 12-12-06 mentions a gang of children damaging buses. I assume that big babies will get the blame for that.

I assume this relates to beliefs that encourage governments to create the underclasses and their lifetimes in hell. The Tit For Tat concept from the artificial intelligence worlds, explored as the heart of Mean Girls 200-4. Heathers? Hellmouth? Law and popular culture that encourage anarchism in fools, is that mental health? I understand England to believe so, yet tourists here will likely not experience this aspect to be much different than elsewhere?

The England that I know is Cammie's Ballad and Daveigh's Donnie, yet some will experience it as Tina M's Santa Fe or Lindsay's Life Size or better.

Apart from some nice locations in Santa Fe, this film has nothing to recommend it. Had the feel of a Sunday afternoon cable movie, and it couldn't seem to decide whether it was trying to be a comedy or not.

The cast, all relatively unknown apart from Gary Cole in the lead role and Jeffrey Jones in a brief but effective cameo, don't try for 'excellent' but succeed very well at 'good'. It's actually much more like a French than an American film in its use of humour and its clever timing. Indeed, some of the scenes could have been lifted straight out of the comedies of Jacques Tatti.

Watch out for Phyllis Frelich as a psychiatrist who has a communications problem and Tina Majorino as a little girl who often seems more grown up than the adults around her. There's also some excellent support from Mark Medoff and Tony Plana as the Mayor and police chief respectively. Michael Harris is solid as Gary Cole's long-suffering partner as is Lolita Davidovich as the object of Cole's unwilling affections.

All in all, this isn't a film for people who want to achieve instant gratification but if you just let it roll over you you'll finish with a smile on your face.

Gary Cole, Lolita Davidovich, Sheila Kelley, and the rest of the cast of this movie about a former cult member trying to integrate back into mainstream society should drop this film from their filmographies. I was hoping for a good movie since it did have such a talented cast, but this movie stunk the whole way through and all the way around.