Day Two 

The Purple Gang

Rain Trailer 2 (SD) from Doug Schulze on Vimeo.

Rain, rain, go away…

No, really, please, do.

This eerie children’s chant is the opening theme for the film The Rain, directed by Michigan filmmaker Douglas Schulze, which had its world premiere last week at the second-annual Detroit Windsor International Film Festival.

And all I have to say about it is…wow. Just…wow.

The Rain follows the interwoven stories of three different generations in the small, drought-ridden farm town called Perseverance. The lands are dry, crops are dying, people are dying, the solution? Sacrifice some kids.

I suppose it’s all relative—as far as horror films go, this is hardly the worst. I mean, a far cry from the best, and barely staying afloat in mediocre, but certainly not nearly as campy and cheesy as films like Night of the Demons and the like.

But at least Night of the Demons is in on the joke—The Rain takes itself so seriously as to be laughable…and that’s not just for the bad acting, the stilted dialogue, or the premise so painfully generic and poorly executed it is an insult to the far superior piece of classic literature exploring the nature of men and morality, tradition and bloodlust, Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery.

This film is a mess of motifs it can never quite settle on: water as both a giver and taker of lives (it heals sick people and kills healthy people? Is that the idea?), as well as a mode of transportation for the Max Schreck-looking character—whose very existence and preternatural abilities are never even remotely addressed, but rather just some extra spookiness thrown in for effect—and a top hat that is Evile Incarnayte. Oh, and did I mention that the basic idea is that the whole town is afflicted by a curse from an Indian shaman for stealing his land and murdering his children? ORIGINAL! Because Indians = SPOOKY! And what self-respecting horror film doesn’t have a good old-fashioned Indian curse?

The film also cheapens the themes explored in the story on which it claims to be based: what made Jackson’s The Lottery so bone-chilling was less the idea that people (of any age) were being sacrificed to ensure the continued prosperity of the community (which is in itself a stomach-turning thought), but more that the community had been doing it for so long that they may have fallen victim to their own potentially meaningless and wholly unnecessary traditions, and not one of them so much as bothered to question those traditions—THAT is what makes the story truly frightful. In The Rain, adults, afflicted with a disease only curable by the rain, sacrifice children in order to save themselves. Frighteningly selfish and violent, yes, but not on the same psycho-social playing field as Jackson.

And also, well, before the adults were sick they were just sacrificing children to make the rain come and stave off destructive drought and famine…but I suppose, in this great day and age of irrigation, that could no longer be a plausible excuse for infanticide so the writers (including director Schulze) had to come up with some other reason for the continued sacrifices.

Except that, only it wasn’t an issue when the Evile Incarnayte top hat was buried, but then there was still a drought, but before when there was a drought I guess some Indian guys approached the white men and were all, “Hey, we’ll give you rain if you give us your children’s SOULS,” and they were all, “Well, you gotta do what you gotta do…” I’m telling you, this thing is a mess from start to finish, and the loose ties that are supposed to link the three simultaneously-told stories just seem to jumble it even more.

Another thing, and this holds for any film that tries its hand at a novel approach to narrative story-telling: when interweaving three separate yet linked stories in order to tell one whole story overall, there needs to be some sort of consistency and narrative flow to the order of the three stories. For example, each sequence should in some way connect to the ones before and after it, perhaps explaining a portion (in this case, perhaps a backstory or a character’s motivation) of the sequence preceding it and then setting up the big reveal for the one that comes after it. What is should not do, and pay attention to this here, is take three different but loosely related stories, chop them up into pieces, and then reassemble them in a way that is jarring to the viewer and in no way contributes anything of value to the natural flow of the story (i.e., giving this Burroughs-ish cut-up format an advantage over a chronological tryptich-style telling). In addition to jumbled and inconsistent motifs, viewers were also treated with a jumbled and inconsistent narrative, one which never fully gelled in a way that explained, really, anything.

Except that the rain is bad. Or good? Or neutral? Guilt by association? Oy.

Let’s see, what else…hoaky? Have I used the word hoaky yet? Consider it done. In this presumably low-budget independent feature that relies heavily on child actors, it is of no great surprise that the acting is a little…bad. But the problem isn’t the children—it’s the adults. When dialogue isn’t delivered as if reading from a cue card, the roles are so overacted that I felt like I was watching Telemundo (minus all the good hair). The children are mostly okay, if a little wooden, and David Carradine…poor David Carradine. How the hell did David Carradine end up in a film like this? He glowered. And growled. And generally did his David Carradine thing (similar to a Clint Eastwood thing, only much more sinister…have you seen Kill Bill?). May he rest in peace, and may this not be his final film (a quick troll through IMDB says it’s not…*whew*).

I can’t decide if this is an example of a writer/director biting off more than they could chew, or if this is simply the work of—and I do hate to say this—an amateur. The film exhibits amateurish understandings of the horror genre and overuses genre tropes to the point of abuse (Music! Seclusion! Disfigurement! Disease! Screaming! Moaning! Rain! Blood! Forests! Nighttime! Indians! Kids! Top hats!).

I wanted to like this film. I really did. I hate panning a local filmmaker because (a) I always want to support the homegrown, and (b) there’s a really good chance I’m going to meet him professionally somewhere at some point and he’s going to ask point-blank about this review and tell me about how the film was 20 years in the making and how dare I call him an amateur and truth be told, I’ll probably deserve it, much as this film deserves the review I gave it.

The one saving grace this film has is that it occurs within a genre that is consistently poorly acted, written, directed, edited, and so forth. Again, in this particular genre, it’s all relative, and as far as entertainment value goes…yeah, I was entertained. Even if that entertainment came in the form of me thinking to myself, “How in the hell do these stories connect, and what’s with Nosferatu? How does he fit into all this? And, wait, are they sacrificing kids because they need the rain for their crops or because they need the rain for their illness? Okay, so first it was the crops, THEN the illness? And why isn’t the dad in the middle segment being healed by the rain? Why is he all disfigured anyway? Wait, is he Nosfertau? Wait, nope…no, Nosferatu was around in the first segment too. And why did the ‘50s mom die in the water when she was sick when everyone else was healed from it? What in the bloody hell…?” and so on.

Breaking Upwards Movie Trailer from Breaking Upwards on Vimeo.

We’ve all been through it before—the long-term relationship gone stale, the inability to let go, the struggle of the fear of being alone versus the continued misery of staying in a relationship that has passed its expiration date…we all know the drill. It is a painful and confusing fact of life for almost all twenty-somethings—and a romantic phenomenon almost exclusive to that age bracket.

Being in your mid-twenties is a confusing enough time in your life: your career has yet to solidify itself, you’re not entirely sure who you are or who you want to be; you’re using your parents as your role models and life guides though you’re slowly starting to realize that that they aren’t the paragons of maturity and smart decision-making you once thought they were; you’re still trying to figure out the Big Things in life (convinced that you can figure out the Big Things, anyway)…it is a tumultuous time under the best of circumstances. Throw in a four-year relationship at its breaking point for good measure, and what you’ve got is, well, a pretty typical life for a 25-year-old.

Or what you’ve got is Breaking Upwards, the narrative feature film debut of director/writer/actor/producer/editor Daryl Wein. What started as an experiment between him and his real-life long-time girlfriend, Zoe Lister-Jones, became fodder for an effortlessly clever and heartbreakingly true-to-life film which tracks the fictionalized couple Daryl and Zoe through one year of jealous rages, immature tantrums, hypocritical tirades, lies, deception, confusion, irritation, impatience, passive-aggressive power-struggles…in other words, a pretty typical relationship for a 25-year-old.

Daryl and Zoe, realizing that their relationship has hit the proverbial wall, decide to make their break-up an experiment. They realize that while they can’t live with each other, they also can’t live without each other (or so they think: relationships tend to be a little more life-or-death dramatic for the twenty-something set). Instead of breaking up, they decide to take “breaks” in order to slowly wean themselves off of each other until they finally feel comfortable enough to fully break up. Certain days they aren’t allowed to speak, and they set parameters on their behavior which eventually leads to them being allowed to date (and sleep with) other people.

If it sounds like a co-dependent meltdown waiting to happen, then you’ve clearly been through something like this before. This little experiment is wrought with raw insecurity, vulnerability, and self-aggrandizement. While the one thing these two characters need is space away from each other, it is to each other that they both keep turning back (when their faith and trust in their own parental models is shaken by what they assume, in a way that only the arrogance of youth can, is a lifetime of poor decisions that led to long-term unhappiness) for guidance and support through their own break-up. It is hard to tell whether what they have is love or co-dependency, though so often one is easily mistaken for the other.

Yeah, I’ve been there. A few times. More than I care to admit. I think we all have, and I think the real question here is at what point are you healthy enough to be in a relationship that is no longer co-dependent? Or perhaps, at what point do you become mature enough to realize that all relationships become comfortable and worn-in eventually—that in time, the passionate lust and mystery fades—and that what seems “stifling” at age 25 might be marital bliss at age 50?

What I love about this film is that it doesn’t really try to answer these questions. Despite being an incredibly smart, savvy, articulate exploration of twenty-somethings in crisis, it never really takes itself so seriously as to act like it has all the answers (a fault of many other films by/about twenty-somethings). In its exploration of emotional immaturity, the film is incredibly sympathetic and mature. It is raw, and it is real—a romantic comedy for every relationship that hasn’t had a happy ending. It is not a symptom of its Gen X, Gen Y, or Gen-whateverness; it is just a simple story about real people experiencing real hurt, and having to suffer the pains of youth and growing up (via breaking up).

Casting themselves in the roles of the main characters based on their own experiences, Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones deliver equally remarkable, tender, real performances that never once seem stilted, scripted, or staged. The dialogue is snappy and witty, almost rapid-fire in a way that is less self-important Linklater and more irreverent Seth Rogen. The actors feel entirely natural, which struck me as an impressive feat considering that the leads are relative unknowns and are reenacting in a way that seems almost masochistic their own relationship’s end. Expertly shot, scripted, and edited, this humble indie project could just as easily be the product of a team with decades more collective experience…but it probably could not have approached the delicate emotional vulnerability, the loneliness, the youthful authenticity of Wein and Lister-Jones.

Examining the many varied power-struggles experienced by people in their twenties—within the confines of family, work, relationships, and the gender double-bind—while also being a very real portrait of very flawed people, Breaking Upwards is perhaps this century’s most poignant and realistic look at relationships, done with an unflinching yet compassionate eye. This is one of the best romantic comedies I have ever seen, even moreso for the fact that the sticky-sweet happy ending so common to the genre was shunned in favor of an ending that a whole lot more real people can actually relate to.

Wein could very well be on his way to becoming the next great auteur, among the ranks of Robert Altman and Woody Allen. I look forward to seeing what is next from him, as well as his luminescently-eyed, f-bomb-dropping ex-girlfriend Zoe Lister-Jones, without whose articulate and sensitive performance the film wouldn’t have been the same.

I received my catalogue of featured films a month beforehand and spent all of that time pouring over the thing, plotting every film I would be seeing down to the millisecond (and often overlapping) back-to-back, day after day, taking into consideration everything from how likely it is to strike a distribution deal (thus meaning I could eventually see it at home, making it unnecessary for me to try to cram it in there) to just how edgy its subject matter is (determining if I would ever be likely to chance seeing it again). I loaded my itinerary with bizarro Asian flicks (Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, Ichi the Killer), Afghani documentaries (Khandahar), and Brazilian dramas (Latitude Zero). The entire week was a breakneck race between one movie theatre and the next, often missing the first 20 minutes of a film after desperately trying to hail a taxi or scarf down a burger before the next screening.

Sure, sometimes after seeing a particularly profound film (like Samsara, in my opinion still one of the best films ever made) we would opt just to get a bite of eat and reflect, forsaking the next film in order to allow the last one to linger in our minds like chocolate on our tongues—like a drug rush of euphoric enjoyment we just wanted to last a little longer.

This was one of the best times in my life. And when the Detroit Windsor International Film Festival announced its inaugural year in 2008, I was able to recapture some of that excitement I felt in Toronto right here in Detroit.

The film “Dear Mr. Fidrych” is about former Detroit
Tiger Mark “The Bird” Fidrych.

Oh sure—it had its issues. Most of the Windsor screenings were cancelled, unbeknownst to those who had already crossed the border to see them (moi). Not all of the selections were top-notch, though extra points for giving local works preference. The scheduling for the CineFlow TechFair workshops, demonstrations, and discussions was juggled and changed without notice, much to the chagrin of those who had planned their entire day around them. But…there were great moments, too—the 20-team participation in the 48-hour film challenge, the world premiere of Unbeatable Harold, meeting filmmaking super-couple Sara Stepnicka and Anthony Vallone at their screening of Sometimes in Life (interview here), the screening of the Rust Belt quarter-life crisis comedy Stick It in Detroit which I only accidentally found myself at but which made me laugh harder than I did at Borat (and often in that some grossly uncomfortable way) and which has given way to a friendship with director Robert Phelps. All the SNAFUs aside—and my God, could we have expected anything else from a fledgling festival in its first year that was such an ambitious undertaking?—and what I experienced at the DWIFF was the same rush of excitement I felt in Toronto.

This year, the Detroit Windsor International Film Festival promises to be even better. Many of the elements from last year will remain—the opening night ceremony with Wayne County Executive (and staunch supporter of local filmmaking) Robert Ficano, the CineFlow TechFair, the Children’s Film Festival, and the 48-hour film challenge—and this year brings even more to the table, including “drive-in” screenings under the stars (no cars, but bring a blanket!).

The films already announced for this year include “Raised Alone,” the first short film by a Michigan filmmaker to qualify for the Michigan Film Incentive Program; The Purple Gang, the feature-length documentary on Detroit’s most infamous gangsters from first-time writer/director H.G. Manos; The Rain, a horror film spanning three centuries and starring the late David Carradine; and Dear Mr. Fidrych, a coming-of-age (twice) story centered on one man’s inspiration from his childhood hero, former Detroit Tiger Mark “The Bird” Fidrych. (This film also features a poignant performance from the late Mark Fidrych, who passed away after a tragic accident in April 2009 as the film neared completion.)

Sam Kadi’s “Raised Alone” Film Trailer

For the CineFlow TechFair workshops, registrants get a chance to witness a state-of-the-art motion-capture rig at work; learn how to animate using the industry-favored program Mudbox; attend lectures and classes in screenwriting, sound, animation, music, 3D modeling, character and story design, FX, and so much more. Michigan-based illustrator Matt Busch will also be in attendance once again; check out my interview with him from last year here.

The second annual Detroit Windsor International Film Festival takes place Thursday, June 25th through Sunday, June 29th (in tandem with Midsummer Nights in Midtown, the replacement for the Festival of the Arts). Weekend passes are $25.00 and are available through the website, www.dwiff.org. The CineFlow TechFair programs are free but require registration.  Tickets to opening and closing ceremonies are sold separately.

This weekend begins the 48-hour film challenge (in which teams have 48 hours to write, direct, and edit a short film following the guidelines set by the DWIFF), so if you see any groups running around town with a camera, try not to get in their way.

The second annual DWIFF is only 13 days away, and the excitement is palpable. This is Detroit’s first large-scale international film festival, in the works before even the tax incentives for filmmakers were announced and now even that much more crucial because of them. This is THE festival for local independent filmmakers to showcase their work, network with other industry members, and learn more about the tricks and trades of the industry. It is a timely and necessary addition to the circuit of worldwide independent film festivals, and had the potential to become one of the finest. Get your passes and start plotting out your weekend itinerary; for film lovers in Detroit, this is our Mecca, and we never even have to leave home.

The Detroit Windsor International Film Festival and Wayne State University will present a free screening of DWIFF’s 2008 winning films.  The screening will take place on Wednesday, June 10 at 7 pm in room 289 of the Student Center Building. 

The featured films include Detroit: Not for Wimps directed by Leigh Richert, Bitch directed by Lilah Vandenburgh, When the World Goes Dark directed by Anthony Scalmato, and Harley Ranger and the Trial of Life directed by Matthew Stanton.