Sleeper Cell: Southland Tales (2006)

Apr 232010

This is the way the world ends. Not with a whimper but a bang. There’s no right place to begin with Southland Tales. The movie is Richard Kelly’s follow up to his cult hit Donnie Darko. In short … ok. There is no¬†short version. The story is pretty ridiculously complicated. But the plot? We can knock that out in a just few lines. It’s one of those multiple story-line deals where you hope everything comes together in the end. And it does. And it’s great. And there’s a musical number!! The universe: on July 4, 2005 atomic bombs were unleashed across Texas leading to the expansion of the Patriot Act towards new heights of draconianism … or depths, whichever you think – into a program called USIdent. Boxer Santaros is a famous actor with ties to the Republican Party. He goes missing and amnesiatically turns up with the entrepreneurial pornstar Krista Now, who herself is linked to a group called “Deep Throat 2″ who aim to bring down the entire government. Together, Boxer and Krista have written a screenplay which (unbeknownst to them) accurately details the events that bring about the end of the world. THEN, there are these scientists who have created a perfect alternate energy source called Liquid Karma that will free the world of pollution and are playing American investors against Japanese investors. Senator Bobby Frost (who quotes poetry every chance he gets and does not negotiate with terrists) is running for re-election, and his connection to Boxer threatens his candidacy. MEANWHILE – Police officer Roland Taverner has been abducted by a radical liberal group known as the Neo-Marxists (who as it is pointed out, know very little about Karl Marx) to be replaced in his duties by a virtual twin under their employ name Ronald Taverner, to stage a fake double-murder in the hopes of bringing down the Big Brother-ish law enforcement. And Bart Bookman is another police officer who could ruin the whole plan, even as Neo-Marxist Zora Charmichaels appears to have motives of her own. And while Boxer tries to regain his memory, it turns out that Ronald and Roland may have a stranger relationship than previously noted. And, obviously, since I just said that, there’s no “may have” about it. They¬†do have a stranger relationship than previously noted. MEANWHILE USIdent surveillance technician Starla Von Luft begins to slowly lose her mind, becomes convinced that she is the heroine in Boxer’s screenplay, Dr. Muriel Fox, and begins to interfere with Boxer’s life in an effort to bring the two of them together. AT THE SAME TIME – Pilot Abilene, a veteran of the wars in the Middle East, has developed a narcotic use for the aforementioned alternate energy, and has his own link to Ronald and Roland.

T. S. Eliot

A Note About T.S. Eliot
The famous quatrain “This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper” is from T.S. Eliot’s 1925 poem “The Hollow Men.” Written from the point of view (probably) of souls in different areas of Death’s Kingdom, the poem describes Europe during the aftermath of World War I through the metaphor of the land of the dead. Eliot was viciously opposed to the Treaty of Versailles as he felt its punitive measures towards Germany were too lenient and in fact foreshadowed the ending of the British Empire. As a poem, “The Hollow Men” is one of Eliot’s landmark works in his career. Its epigraph, “A penny for the Old Guy,” is a reference to the straw-man effigies burned in Britain on November the fifth of each year to celebrate Guy Fawkes Night, a commemoration of the failure of the Gunpowder Plot of November 5, 1605, which saw the attempted arson of the Houses of Parliament at the hands of 13 conspirators who aimed to assassinate King James I. The attempt gave rise to multiple versions of the following Guy Fawkes Night song:
Remember, remember the fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I see no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t’was his intent
To blow up the King and Parli’ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England’s overthrow;
By God’s mercy he was catch’d
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holla boys, Holla boys, let the bells ring.
Holla boys, holla boys, God save the King!
And what should we do with him? Burn him!
The 4-line final stanza of “The Hollow Men,” being among the most quoted of Eliot’s work, alludes simultaneously to the capture of Guy Fawkes in the tunnels under the English House of Lords, the end of The Great War with the signing of an innefective treaty, and the slow demise of the English Empire.

The Conspirators

THE RIDICULOUS CAST LIST:
Dwayne Johnson – Boxer Santaros / Jericho Cane
Seann William Scott – Roland Taverner / Ronald Taverner
Sarah Michelle Gellar – Krista Kapowski / Krista Now

Kevin Smith as Simon Theory

Michele Durrett – Starla Von Luft (USIdent employee)
Wood Harris – Dion Element (Neo-Marxist)
Chistopher Lambert – Walter Mung (arms dealer – not immortal)
John Larroquette – Vaughn Smallhouse (politician)
Bai Ling – Serpentine (muscle)
Jon Lovitz – Officer Bart Bookman (complete badass)
Mandy Moore – Madeline Frost Santaros (Boxer’s wife)
Holmes Osborne – Senator Bobby Frost
Cheri Oteri – Zora Charmichaels (Neo-Marxist)
Amy Poehler – Veronica Mung / Dream (Neo-Marxist)
Lou Taylor Pucci – Martin Kefauver
Miranda Richardson – Nana Mae Frost
Zelda Rubenstein – Dr. Katarina Kuntzler
Will Sasso – Fortunio Balducci
Wallace Shawn – Baron von Westphalen
Kevin Smith – Simon Theory
Justin Timberlake – Private Pilot Abilene

Southland Tales is another movie that suffered due to its inability to find its proper audience. The movie was billed as a visual feast (which it kinda is, but not overly so) and a sci-fi thriller (which it really isn’t). Instead, the movie takes on the attitude more closely akin to RoboCop or Starship Troopers. I would even put it in the same category as Fight Club (even though it’s so much sillier than all three of those movies) insofar as it’s an over-the-top comedy that while cluing you in that it means to be a comedy, doesn’t provide you with pregnant pauses to let you laugh out loud. It takes itself as completely seriously as a 16 year old writing a love poem to their one true soul mate that, dammit, you just wouldn’t understand. Except that the movie, unlike all 16 year old poets, knows how ridiculous it is. This is a verbal slapstick comedy that just happens to leave out the pies to the face, the slips on the banana peels and the slide trombones.

If you’re not familiar with his work, you should know Richard Kelly makes big movies. Not in terms of box office or budget or presentation, but he tells a story regardless of how out of control it can get. His other two directorial efforts, Donnie Darko and The Box could both have easily been explained away as psychological thrillers, but he doesn’t short-change the audience with that lazy cop-out. Instead, if the world has to end, the set designer gets a good challenge. Even his screenplay for Domino (directed by Tony Scott) treats his characters fairly, and when all hell breaks loose, he doesn’t give you clever cutaways. He zooms in and makes sure the lighting is good. His movies challenge the scope of Hollywood story-telling as ambitiously as Alex Proyas (Dark City) or Darren Aronofsky (The Fountain) and Southland Tales is example number one.

Justin Timberlake as Pilot Abilene

MEMORABLE QUOTES
“I haven’t had a bowel movement in six days.” — Ronald Taverner
“Did I just see two cars pork each other?” — Senator Bobby Frost
“You’re a pimp. Pimps don’t commit suicide.” — Serpentine

Like any other movie, Southland Tales has its faults. There’s pretty clumsy narration throughout the movie provided by JT’s Pilot Abilene. Voice over is usually due to a lack of trust in the audience, and this doesn’t seem to be an exception. The choreography for the musical number (which is set to one of my all-time favorite songs: “All These Things That I Have Done” by The Killers) doesn’t do anything to highlight Timberlake’s talents – kind of a waste. But altogether, this movie is just really really funny. I’ll reference Fight Club again to compare receptions. Fight Club was trashed by critics who thought it reflected all the worst parts of humanity. Kenneth Turan of the L.A. Times called Fight Club “…a witless mishmash of whiny, infantile philosophizing and bone-crunching violence that actually thinks it’s saying something of significance.” Old Ken missed the joke. The point of satires isn’t what’s being satirized; it’s the irony. Don’t be like Ken. Movies like Fight Club and Southland Tales aren’t 1-level satirical wastes of time. These are movies that are not only poking fun at systems gone awry, but also at the counter-culture who stands up against them, and also at the philosophies the movies themselves put forth as¬†possible answers. Southland Tales is a tricky movie to navigate, because distributed amongst all the silliness and farce, are points of real artistic invention. It has one of the cooler arrangements of The Star-Spangled Banner I’ve heard in a while, and the scene between Roland and Ronald evokes real emotion. In the end, Southland Tales isn’t necessarily trying to tell us what we should think about The Patriot Act or alternate energy or politics in general, but that we¬†should be thinking about them. It’s not always what you believe, just so long as you believe in something. This movie should have changed things like a 1920s German expressionist. It’s audacious and ambitious and says screw the moon, we’re shooting for the stars.