Fierce People

I literally have no idea how to rate this movie. It comes in two halves, and I quite liked both of them, but the two halves belong to completely different films. Have you ever been driving down a quiet country road near your house, taken a left turn and suddenly found yourself in Helmand Province, Afghanistan? That's what this movie is like - there's a tonal shift around the halfway mark that's so jarring, so out of place with what's gone before, that it left me utterly dumbfounded, staring at the screen, saying over and over 'That didn't really happen, did it?'

If I've got trouble with it, I can only take pity on the people who had to market this movie. It's a pretty light comedy for the first half - all wacky families, odd-but-cute kid taking his first steps towards manhood, that sort of thing, and it's all very well done. And at the centre of it all is Donald Sutherland, never better in the role of a patriarch who has made scads of money, but lost out in many other ways. It's light and frothy and amusing and - then. Then the event happens, and everything turns VERY dark indeed. The second half plays more like a socially conscious melodrama, with teenage pregnancy, class division and... other issues. It's good too, for what it is, but that seismic shift in the middle of the film makes it all pretty hard to stomach.

So do I recommend this movie or not? Hell, I don't know. Both its parts are very good, but they add up to a baffling whole. I realize that that isn't necessarily very helpful, but you probably ought to be warned that this has been marketed as a comedy, and an enjoyable coming of age movie. That's true, but only up until the halfway mark...

It's 1980. 16 year old Finn Earl (Anton Yelchin) wants to escape from his drug addicted "massage therapist" mother Liz (Diane Lane) and their lower east side flat to study the Iskanani Indians or Fierce People with his anthropologist father whom he has never met. Instead, she takes them to the New Jersey country estate of her ex-client billionaire Ogden C. Osbourne (Donald Sutherland) for the summer. There he encounters another kind of Fierce People. He falls for Ogden's granddaughter Maya Langley (Kristen Stewart) and befriends her older brother Bryce (Chris Evans). Their father is in a coma and their mother (Elizabeth Perkins) is bossy. Jilly (Paz de la Huerta) is the exceedingly friendly maid.

Anton Yelchin plays yet another smug kid. This time, he's studying rich people like an anthropologist. It's an overly odd family but the quirkiness never gets to be funny. Then the movie takes a dark turn. The characters and the story always had some dark tones but the turn is especially nasty. The quirky slightly humorous movie breaks down and struggles. The movie is terribly uneven and director Griffin Dunne should have started the movie in a darker place. If he elevates the darker tones early, the movie could stay creepy and disturbed.

Long ago, when I was a middle class suburban teen, I had the dubious experience of spending most of a year around rich kids. A few of them were as rich as the family depicted in this film. This movie, more than any other I've seen, nails the behavior of young super-wealthy kids like the characters portrayed by Chris Pine and Kristin Stewart. That intoxicating mix of being beautiful, athletic, active, charming, seductive, cocky, arrogant, witty, disarming, entitled, and in their souls, corrupted and corrupting, envious, narcissistic, self-absorbed, irrationally competitive, and pitiful. Of course this film depiction is exaggerated (but not incorrect) in its evil and violence, but it hits far more realistic notes than false ones. Uncannily so. This really is what young foks act like when they know there will be no negative consequences to them acting out their whims.

Otherwise, this movie has something too many movies lack these days -- a smart story that's still engaging, seductive, funny, but still with a social message, that doesn't weigh you down with angst or excessive downerism, and that's well directed and acted, and easy to re-watch a few months later. Then a few months after that.

If you just want to judge this movie based on the final product you see on the screen, it would be about 4 stars. I give it 6 because it wanted to be so much more and I will always find value in anyone or anything that aspires to greatness even when failure is the result.

Basically, would you rather see a prosaic movie that can only be boring and unimaginative be as great as it can be or a daring movie with interesting ideas, that could be great, turn out to be mediocre at best?

The talent the production attracted tells you that the potential was there but I am guessing the production either ran out of time or money or both as the finished product failed as a complete work of art.

It does make me wonder about Griffin Dunne, the director, I am intrigued by the subject matter he chooses to direct, you can always sense the potential, but he never seems to make a great film. I say that with the caveat that Addicted to Love is one of my favorite films, flawed, but it strikes a nerve with me.

Even as mediocre as Fierce People is, it will make you think, it is definitely intellectual, and the subject matter concerning humanity and the desires and motives and actions of modern day human beings as compared to primitive cultures is certainly interesting. The idea being that no matter how sophisticated modern man, especially in western cultures, thinks he is, when it all comes down to it we are still just human beings, animals, that want and need sex and food and shelter and comfort, and unfortunately, violence and cruelty and power over other human beings is often how we gain and protect what we have.

Bottom line, if you are simply looking for escapist entertainment, skip this one, you will be bored. But if you want to dig a little deeper and maybe think about the creatures you interact with on a daily basis in a different way, this film is worth a viewing.

I attended a screening of "Fierce People" at the 2006 Woodstock Film Festival. I hesitate to label it a "premiere" of any sort, since it was shot in the spring of 2004 and had its world premiere at Tribeca in 2005. It played several festivals that year. Release seemed imminent, then it disappeared. Poof. Vanished. Or so it appeared to the film-going public. Rumors of a theatrical or DVD release have popped up now and then, but all proved unfounded. Then this screening was announced. Perhaps one can call it a "re-premiere?" It certainly felt as if I was witness to a buried treasure. And what a treasure it was.

I suppose one could characterize "Fierce People" as a coming-of-age drama. But it also has elements of comedy and tragedy, as well as mystery. And a bit of farce thrown in. In short, real life. That makes it hard to pigeonhole, which puts it more into the category of an indie as opposed to a Hollywood movie. But its high production values, big budget feel, and star caliber cast seem at odds with the indie label. So let's call it a hybrid. And, perhaps, that's why it's been "lost." It defies categorization.

Meet Finn Earl (Anton Yelchin), 15, whose father is absent. In fact, Finn has never known him. But he sees him and hears him via the collection of home movies sent from South America. Dad is a renowned anthropologist, and has made a name for himself by setting up shop with the Yanomani, the tribe of "Fierce People" who live to kill and, well, procreate. All their activities are built around those two "tasks," and Finn is captivated by it. Mom Liz (Diane Lane) is also somewhat absent. Although present physically, she is lost in a world of cocaine and alcohol. So Finn becomes an adult in his little solitary world with his reels of film.

One summer, Mom decides to drag Finn along with her into the wilds of New Jersey. A massage therapist, Mom has catered to a wealthy client, Ogden C. Osborne (Donald Sutherland, in a tour de force performance) and he has invited her for an extended house call at his palatial estate. Osborne's "tribe" includes an assortment of eccentric rich kids, servants, and village idiots among whom Finn will find himself part of his own anthropological study. Will his experience with Dad's films help him survive life as a visitor to this tribe? Will he be accepted? Or will he be seen as an outsider, concurrently struggling with his own identity as an adolescent? Such is the stuff of fairy tales, and I suppose this would be if not for the dark underbelly which director Griffin Dunne and writer Dirk Wittenborn have infused into this magnificent story.

With Anton Yelchin's voice-over, intercutting pieces of Dad's home movies, Finn must learn to go back to being the teenager he never really had a chance to be, stop being the parent to his Mom, allow newly-sober Mom to be parent to him, and learn responsibility on the way to adulthood the way it should have taken place all along. Yet he needs to make this transformation in a dangerous, dark world where playing with fire is folly to this fractured family.

This is, first and foremost, a story-driven film and Griffin Dunne emphasized as much in the intro to the film. He bought the rights to Wittenborn's novel even as it was being written, and Wittenborn's own screenplay comes to life in the hands of the masterful Dunne in a way that's a work of wonder.

This is also largely a character-driven film, and Sutherland has never been better. His star turn as Osborne stunned those around me and will likely leave you amazed as well. Diane Lane's character ultimately exhibits so many personalities that it's hard to imagine another actor pulling it off so well. She is breathtaking. But more than anything, "Fierce People" is Anton Yelchin's film. He has a long resume as a child actor but preciously little as a teen. Other than the little-known "House of D" (also a gem), he is best known as Byrd on TV's "Huff." In January, he will be seen in "Alpha Dog" (also sitting on the shelf since 2004, a film I saw at Sundance this year and in which he is the "heart and soul"). His performance here goes far beyond what one would expect from someone so young, and is nothing short of spectacular.

This complex, quirky film has remained out of sight long enough. "Fierce People" is a treasure filled with light and shadow, comedy and tragedy, joy and pathos, but mostly wonder.