His first film was Following, an extremely low-budget (damn near guerrilla) film that made the festival circuit but never broke the mainstream. Then came Memento; it was unlike anything audiences had ever seen before. Insomnia, the Prestige, Batman Begins and the Dark Knight…Nolan is one of the most celebrated and accomplished contemporary filmmakers working today. His films are dark and sophisticated, complex and intense. He gets huge box office draw working with themes and structures that in any other hands would be considered too esoteric, too abstruse for the common (American) audience. His work is consistently critically and commercially successful, and yet he has succeeded in retaining his own unique voice in his films, his auteurism, despite the fact that he is now working from deeply within the Hollywood machine. Not unlike Hitchcock himself, really.

Inception is Nolan’s latest achievement, and in many ways it is almost an homage to his earlier work. Written, produced and directed by Nolan himself (as he has done with the majority of his films, save for the script for the adapted Insomnia), Inception is the latest entrant into Nolan’s spiraling world of colliding realities, multi-layered and ever-shifting. Here Nolan goes back to his basics: delving deep into the fractured minds of damaged men to explore their own delicate and imbalanced realities.

Inception is the bigger, glossier, more sci-fi oriented brother of Memento, which was more of a straightforwardly (though non-linear) psycho-drama film noir. But Inception echoes of Memento at every turn: a man whose entire sense of reality is in question, whose own memories can’t be trusted, who has lost a wife and is desperate to bring her back, even though he knows he cannot. Sci-fi action thriller or psychological mindfuck, the question Nolan is ultimately asking is this: how much do we lie to ourselves to preserve our own fragile psyches? Or, in a pedantic theoretical sense, if we construct our own realities how can we ever really know what’s real…and is there even such a thing?

It would be a mistake to compare this film to emotionally void yet visually stunning action flicks like The Matrix, though the multi-tiered layers of so-called reality make the comparison inevitable (Cronenberg’s eXistenZ also comes to mind, as does Sergei Lukyanenko’s concept of the Gloom in his Day Watch novels, in which each layer is increasingly more dangerous and unstable, threatening to claim its victims and make them forget their own realities). But what could have been just another frivolous summer blockbuster, a sci-fi companion to Ocean’s Eleven, is instead a fairly intricate character study.

Cobb – the name itself taken straight from the duplicitous main character in Nolan’s own Following – is an Extractor: he steals people’s dreams. Or, rather, he breaks into people’s dreams in order to steal information, a kind of high-stakes cerebral heist. For reasons that are revealed as the plot unfolds, Cobb (played coolly by Leonardo DiCaprio, with a hint at the inner turmoil about to bubble over) decides to take on a very risky assignment, one which promises to free him once and for all so he can return to his children: an inception, planting an idea rather than stealing one. He enlists the help of other professional thieves and scientists (including Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe, and Nolan regular Michael Caine), and together they contrive a plan for inception which ultimately requires multiple layers of dreams-within-dreams, numerous faux-realities to construct, and increased levels of danger with every dream level traversed. But during the course of the planning and implementation of the inception, Cobb’s own destructive past is slowly revealed, making him a threat to himself and his team.

And this is where Inception fails: in all of Nolan’s films, each character is given a level of depth too little seen in mainstream films. Here, the characters simply are not developed enough for the audience to feel true empathy. The lack of development could have been salvaged by strong performances, but auxiliary cast members were forgettable (except perhaps Murphy, as the inception target), and our lead actor Leonardo DiCaprio – a fierce talent in certain roles – lacked the intensity necessary to carry the film. The audience does not feel the same self-deluding desperation that Guy Pearce gave us in Memento, or the same torturous obsession Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale exhibited in The Prestige, or even just the internal conflict of Bale as Batman. Nolan’s films are by trademark psychologically probing character studies, regardless of what kind of genre they’re packaged in; here it felt as if Inception tried to be both fully a mind-bending sci-fi thriller AND a quiet descent into the darkest depths of men’s minds…without ever really succeeding at being either.

The one exception here is Marion Cotillard, who plays Cobb’s deceased wife Mal (“evil”) who remains very much alive in his subconscious. Cotillard (whose delightfully wicked turn in Love Me If You Dare should not be missed) is exactly what she needs to be, playing the haunted memory of a troubled wife whose death Cobb is somehow responsible for. She is not a fully-developed character, nor is she supposed to be. Instead, she is a fully-developed obsession, a culmination of all of Cobb’s desires and regrets. She is angry, vengeful, and destructive. She is love and revenge. Her eyes are wild, a feral foil to Cobb’s attempted placidity, betraying his own turmoil roiling beneath the quiet surface. DiCaprio plays Cobb’s secrets discreetly, losing control only when at his most vulnerable – in his dreams, with Mal.

Another issue lies with the development of the Cobb character: his motivations are never really clear – or just don’t entirely make sense. By the end of Memento, it was clear that Leonard Shelby had actively made the decision to continue believing the story he himself created – that his wife had been killed when he was attacked and lost his short-term memory and he was trying to avenge her death – when it reality it was HE who killed her, he was Sammy Jankis, and he conscious mind could not accept what he had done so he continued perpetuating his own false reality in which he plays the avenging hero with a conveniently unreliable memory, leaving himself planted clues to the “killer’s” identity. Inception unravels here (SPOILER ALERT: SKIP TO NEXT PARAGRAPH): if Cobb were indeed still in a dream at the end, what is his motivation for staying there? In this dream world Mal is dead and his children are lost to him; if he could make the decision to descend to another dream level in which they were all together why wouldn’t he do so, if he were already choosing to stay in a dream as it was? A true Memento-era Nolan twist would have been that Cobb became convinced their world wasn’t real, killed his wife to prove it only to find out he was wrong, and decided to escape to a dream world in which she committed suicide instead. This begs the question: has Hollywood softened Nolan?

Nolan’s trademark devices are all in place: an eerily epic score that conveys as much emotion as the actors’ faces; softly-lit flashbacks of tender moments tinged with longing and regret; repeated refrains and images which seem innocuous enough at first until they gain a heavy significance as the plot progresses. But with his newly developed skills as an action film director, Nolan pulls out a gorgeously orchestrated piece of cinematic choreography as characters in a second-tier dream fight inside a rolling hallway, where all sense of orientation is lost and they leap from ceiling to floor to wall. Visuals such as the city of Paris rolling over onto itself are stunning, yet also oddly deemphasized. This visceral film is less about manipulating dream cities and walking on walls and more about navigating the realms of subconscious desires.

Though not quite as non-linear as its precursor Memento, Inception’s resolution is less clear, and less satisfying. No doubt this will benefit from a second viewing, but despite its flaws Inception is another solid example of Nolan’s quiet character studies delving into the darkest natures of man packaged in all the pretty Hollywood glitz to get popcorn audiences in the door and keep academics referencing it in film journals for years to come. A weak film from an auteur of this caliber is still a towering achievement over most others, and even if Hollywood has softened Nolan (or, more likely, forced him to soften himself), a film like Inception is still more daring than most other big-budget blockbusters. You may not get the emotional investment you’ve come to expect from Nolan, but he still does not disappoint the intellect.

Now playing in theatres everywhere.

Sort of.

Let’s try this again.

Jerichow is an intellectualized exploration of greed and desperation.

Well, yes, it’s definitely that, too.

One more time.

Jerichow is full of surprises.

That pretty much nails it.

While it would be pretty easy, and also accurate enough, to sum up Jerichow as a loose interpretation of James M. Cain’s novel The Postman Always Rings Twice and the films that it inspired, it would also be a gross oversimplification of the emotional layers of the film. While Jerichow has much in common with the neo-noir genre from which the story was born, it also exceeds the generic tropes of the genre to become something much more intellectually intense, a film that speaks all at once about love, greed, betrayal, desperation, fear of death, fear of dependence, fear of abandonment, childish desires, and a longing for home (whether it be near or far). It is film noir transplanted six decades in the future and a full ocean away, set in a small, picturesque East German town where blue collar jobs have all but disappeared and the city is dying a slow death.

Jerichow opens with Thomas (Benno Furmann), a dishonorably discharged (for reasons unexplained) army vet who has just returned to his mother’s home, willed to him after her death. From this opening sequence the theme of money—who has it, who wants it, what one is willing to do to get it—is strong. Thomas’s former business acquaintances (of an unspecified field) are there with him, extending condolences and also a sincere regret that the money he owes must become an issue during this time. The way his former boss speaks to him is reminiscent of the sympathy and sternness one might use when speaking with a child who has done wrong, but who is otherwise a good kid whom you like and really don’t desire to punish. When the boss cleverly deduces Thomas’s hiding spot for his money—in a tin can in his old childhood tree house—it is clear that Thomas is being situated as a kind of child in this film; one whose behavior and perception of the world around him is child-like—simple, sincere, naïve.

Thomas soon meets Ali (Hilmi Sozer), a successful businessman in an area where the odds are against him, who also happens to have a fondness for drink. Thomas helps Ali out of a precarious situation, and so Ali offers him a job. It is through the course of his work that he meets Ali’s wife, Laura (Nina Hoss), a woman who initially treats him with nothing but disdain but who falls for him as he falls for her, in their equally wide-eyed, childish ways.

The basic plotline follows that of Postman fairly closely, until it diverges at the point of the murder plot. As Thomas enters their lives, he observes the strained relationship between Ali and Laura, and ultimately acts as a foil to them, providing an outlet for Laura’s domestic and internal frustration—or perhaps just acting as a playmate in this grown-up world of children’s games and children’s dreams.

Thomas and Laura are like a little kids playing games that are beyond their capacity to understand. They both hide money in places a child would, they run off to sneak kisses though always with the adrenaline-rush risk of being caught, and they plot a heinous crime as an extremist solution to an otherwise straightforward problem. They may be having sex, but there is little that is sexy about it—their sex is an act of desperation, of clinging onto a life they feel is rushing past them. Like children, they latch on to each other and refuse to let go. Thomas claims to love Laura though he knows next to nothing about her, and Laura later responds with “You can’t love, if you don’t have money!” Their understanding of the world is simple to a fault, the kind of naïve perception that one would expect from a child. Whether they are just shielded from or are completely oblivious to reality is never fully realized, though that reality comes crashing through loud and clear with the unexpected ending in which they must reap the consequences of their reckless trickster deeds.

Ali is the only character in the film who is portrayed as something of an adult, though even he is prone to child-like exuberance and overindulgence (such as the scene in which he channels “The Greek” from Postman when he dances drunkenly to Turkish folk music by the sea), and childish emotions (like his insane jealousy and suspicion of his wife, which causes him to follow her around town and beat her). Ali is otherwise a successful businessman who owns a nice home and has beaten life’s odds despite being faced with possible defeat at all turns, though he grapples with his own sense of displacement, feeling even well into middle-age like he is missing his sense of home, like he is living in a land that “doesn’t want him.”

With long looks and a sly thoughtfulness in his eyes, Ali may be a drunkard but he is no fool. He is much wiser to the world than Laura or Thomas who, despite their own tribulations, seem to never have fully developed into functional adults. But it isn’t until the end of the film, when Ali is faced with the imminence of his own death, that he seems to have a full understanding of life, and the horror of it. His final action is meant an eternal punishment for Thomas and Laura, that even though they got what they thought they wanted they must now live with the guilt for the rest of their lives, never really knowing who to blame and unable to seek forgiveness. Murder, as it turns out, is not child’s play.

Throughout the film, money is both a motivational force and a source of destruction. Thomas comes to town with no job, no money, and no work, and becomes dependent upon Ali for the money he pays him. Laura is equally dependent upon Ali and his money, after she married him and he absorbed her considerable (and unspecified) debts. Ali, in turn, is constantly on the lookout for people cheating him in his business, and is savvy to all their tricks as well as smaller strategies such as how to save money on gas while making deliveries. While the cast is very small—really only the three main characters—money plays the fourth silent role in the story. It is addressed in a way that is beyond simple greed; money here is a promise of independence, a new beginning, a source of betrayal, an act of desperation, a lifelong pursuit. These are not the kind of characters who rob a bank to get rich—they need, and want, and yearn, and they each conceptualize money as a means of achieving their goals. They are living in a post-Fordian economy which was in their lifetimes also still politically Socialist, and they are still unsure how to adjust. Ali, the only foreign-born character, is the only one adaptable enough to survive.

Much like a noir film, Jerichow is very quiet and minimalist. There are only three major characters, the settings are limited, the music used sparingly, the dialogue sparse. Much is communicated without words, forcing the audience to decipher the characters’ thoughts, actions, and motivations for themselves. It may strike a viewer as being emotionally detached from its characters or even intentionally elusive, but such determinations undermine the simple yet torrid raw human emotions that are the driving force of the film. Director Christian Petzold is not going to hand-feed you your analysis; he’s going to make you do the work yourself, but he gives you all you need to understand.

Jerichow is Petzold’s latest incisive offering, coming after his internationally acclaimed Yella. Considered by many critics to be one of the most talented and underappreciated filmmakers internationally, his films have a certain headiness that suit the arthouse crowd much better than a mainstream audience. Both leads, Furmann and Hoss, have worked with him on multiple occasions, and it seems obvious in their understated yet emotionally charged performances that this is a director who is able to conjure the exact kind of performance from his actors that his script requires, and they are more than happy to deliver it to him.

As a film, Jerichow is tight and controlled, revealing only as much as is necessary and at a carefully measured pace. The characters are each desperately searching for something—for independence, for home, for life. Deftly balancing a crime that is drained of its passion and replaced with something much more complex with a ground-level paradigm shift in global economy, Jerichow is indeed full of surprises.

Jerichow is now playing at the Detroit Film Theatre through Sunday, August 2nd. Check website for showtimes and ticket information.

I know that it is written somewhere in the top-secret handbook of film critics that you must give rave reviews to all foreign films no matter what, especially when that foreign film deals with a specific culture or practice that is scarcely touched upon (such as: goat herders inhabiting the steppes of Kazakhstan), filling some void in the cultural awareness of Americans via a limited-release foreign-language arthouse flick (and film critics love a good cultural-awareness-enhancing arthouse flick). And so I am aware that I just might be the only critic in the entire U-Ess-of-A who will openly say without hesitation that I did not like this movie, and I know this proclamation will draw gasps from the culture-fetishist arthouse types who feel that liking all foreign-language arthouse flicks, especially the ones about remote nomadic life, and calling the film things like “extraordinary” and “intoxicating,” is the hallmark of a distinctly cultured and intellectually superior person and to not agree means by direct proportion you are not as distinctly cultured and intellectually superior as those who clearly know better.

Yes, I am aware of this. All that being said, I still didn’t like this film.

Tulpan is the story of a young man named Asa (Askhat Kuchinchirekov) with dreams, big dreams. He was a naval officer and now he’s looking to get himself a nice little wifey and his very own flock of sheep to herd so he can have a nice little life on the steppes of Kazakhstan, and oh yes he’s going to be WAY more successful in this lifestyle than his poverty-stricken sister’s family, who are putting him up during his stay to fetch said wifey, because, you know, he’s got dreams. He doesn’t know a thing about sheep-herding and a live birth makes him gag, but still—he’s got dreams.

Our title character is the potential wife in question, who in turn has absolutely no interest in Asa nor in the fantasyland he concocts in which octopi are large enough to strangle a human and a man with no relevant knowledge can strike it rich living a nomad’s life. Bee-tea-double-u, we never actually see more than the back of the title character’s head. Which is fitting—that the film was named after its most elusive character—considering that the film itself is never quite sure what kind of film it actually wants to be; the name and its seemingly only tangential relationship to the storyline is representative of the film’s overall incohesiveness.

The film has no clear sense of theme or direction. Is it an ethnographic documentary? Is it a kind of love story (and only by the broadest stretch of the term)? Is it a coming-of-age tale, or a story exploring the delicate and often explosive nature of family? Well, it’s a little of each, and not really wholly any, which isn’t to say that a film cannot be more than one “thing”…it just doesn’t work here. Tulpan hints at weighty issues including but not limited to: poverty, a dying way of life, the importance of familial bonds, unrequited love, misguided ambition, the importance of self-discovery, and some other things. The ambling goofiness of Asa and his best friend Boni when juxtaposed with the much more serious and sincere issues that face sheepherders constantly on the brink of starvation simply do not mesh—the light-heartedness undermines the more serious tones and make them into a kind of joke, or at least make them seem, well, not all that serious.

It wants to be a love story, though it isn’t. Asa becomes hell-bent on pursuing the fickle Tulpan, despite her constant rejection, and who could blame her? The man courting her is whiny, annoying, and as Tulpan herself points out, has big ears. He is a wide-eyed dreamer convinced, much like arrogant youth can so often be, that he can follow the same path as his family but be so much the more successful for it. He is childish and naïve, lacking any sense of grounded reality. And in his worst moments, he is ungrateful, pig-headed, and insulting. I wouldn’t want to marry him either.

I realize that to draw such vivid characters as to evoke such a strong emotion from me, the viewer (in this case, extreme irritation) points to strong directing, dialogue, and acting. None of this is in question here. But how am I supposed to be rooting for this guy to win the heart of the modernly ambitious Tulpan when all I really want is for her to follow her dreams away from him and from the steppes of Kazakhstan? And did I mention that Asa is only “in love” with Tulpan because she happens to be the only available female around and his boss will not give him his own flock of sheep until he has a wife? Kind of sucks the romance out of it a little, doesn’t it?

But that’s only one element of the film. When it drops the goofy antics of Asa and Boni, the film drops Asa’s (and, by extension, Tulpan’s) storyline entirely, then focusing on the lives on Samal and Ondas, Asa’s sister and brother-in-law. In these moments, the film actually does become a quiet, tender portrayal of this vanishing nomadic way of life, displaying without over-sentimentalizing their constant struggle for survival and in the midst of all that, their strength and love as a family. But then it’s back to Asa and his asinine behavior, or long uncut shots of scenery characteristic of a geographic documentary, and the film gets jumbled once again.

Tulpan is the first feature film directed by Sergei Dvortsevoy (who shares writing credits with Gennadi Ostrovsky), whose previous films were small documentaries about small people with small ways of life. This feature is entirely in keeping with his repertoire; however, he hasn’t yet fully graduated from documentary to narrative, and Tulpan, like a newborn lamb unsure of its footing, is evidence of those first few shaky steps. Which isn’t to say he won’t get there—he just hasn’t yet.

In between subtle, simple, touching interactions between Samal, Ondas, and their children, Dvortsevoy intercuts lengthy, uncut shots of the desert, the windstorms, the sheep being herded…effectively halting the narrative flow each time. The film has no soundtrack but instead relies on the jarring, discordant sounds of a donkey braying incessantly, a high-pitched child’s voice singing off-key, and deafening windstorms to fill the soundtrack void during unnecessarily long scenes of a child running through the sands and clouds moving through the sky and wind blowing. Honestly this film could be watched entirely on fast-forward and would probably still be just as tedious, though it would be over twice as fast.

There is humor in the script, certainly, as there is also a certain amount of tenderness. Unknown actors essentially playing themselves give fine, understated, nuanced performances. Dvortsevoy’s filming style gives it a sense of documentary-like realism, but unfortunately, this is not a documentary but a narrative, and one that never quite fully gels. By the time Asa has his Big Awakening (which is the only point in time that the film falls prey to the romanticizing it constantly teeters on the edge of), I had entirely lost interest in him. While it would be easy to gush about the beauty, charm, realism, and cultural heritage present in the film, try not to get too caught up in the cinematography—which, in essence, seems to be the very mistake the director made.

Tulpan plays at the Detroit Film Theatre inside the DIA July 17th-26th. See website for ticket information and showtimes: www.dia.org/dft.

Séraphine is the story of an ordinary person doing extraordinary things. Séraphine Louis was a housecleaner in a tiny provincial town in France called Senlis. She was in her forties already when she first took up the paint brush, following the instruction of her “guardian angel.” Her work was a joke amongst the other townspeople, particularly those whose homes she cleaned and sheets she washed. But Séraphine kept painting, to the point of poverty and exhaustion, putting every last bit of money and energy into her work as her own intensely private way of celebrating her faith.

Eventually, and improbably, her work was discovered by art collector and critic Wilhelm Uhde (German actor Ulrich Tukur)—better known as the man who discovered Picasso. He was a known proponent of the “naïve” painters, an unfortunate term which refers to an artist’s lack of formal training but whose passion for the art is insatiable, even compulsive (and now a little more diplomatically called “visionary art”). Séraphine was ill-prepared for the money and attention that came with her sudden patronage, and eventually succumbed to her own ever-looming mental illness—the very one that likely inspired her painting in the first place. She died in a mental asylum in France, but her art, known under the name “Séraphine de Senlis,” is still considered a significant find in primitif painting.

Martin Provost’s film, based on this unlikely heroine and her even more unlikely circumstances, was the winner of seven Césars (the French equivalent of the Oscars), including awards for best film, best screenplay, and best actress, an honor that doesn’t begin to celebrate the tender, nuanced portrayal Belgium-born actress Yolande Moreau gives to the role of the simple yet impassioned Séraphine.

The film itself is merely okay. It spans two decades of Séraphine’s life in a way that is at times slow and meandering, at other times flashing forward so quickly as to be disorientating. The one saving grace of the inconsistent pacing is that at all points our heroine is doing the exact same thing: by day trudging to and from laundering clothes in the river and the homes she cleans, taking moments to sneak into the supplies store to buy varnish; by night painting with a feverish dedication as if possessed by the very angels whom she claims guide her.

What this film lacks is a more thorough exploration of Séraphine’s personal relationships with others. We see her treated as a dog by those she works for, and we see that she has some sort of friendship with the women of the local convent. We see her offering her prayers of devotion in church, and we often see her alone, trudging through the countryside or lying on the grass by her favorite tree. And we see her painting.

There is a brief building of her relationship with her patron Uhde, during which time she seems to express a sense of jealousy over Uhde’s sister (the familial tie unknown to her); this leads to an entirely unnecessary and distracting side story with Uhde which focuses on his relationship with a young painter named Helmut who was dying of tuberculosis. Why Uhde’s homosexuality became such an important factor in Séraphine’s painting as to require such a derailing emphasis in the film is unclear, and by that I mean it clearly wasn’t and did little more in the film that to halt the progress of Séraphine’s own story, one which I feel was not given the full attention that was due to it.

It isn’t until nearly the end of the film that we see Séraphine in a close friendship with another person; this young girl, a housecleaner named Minouche, seems to act in an almost daughter-like capacity, being both an admirer of Séraphine’s work as well as concerned for Séraphine’s welfare. Minouche becomes Séraphine’s confidante, and it is when she asks Séraphine if she had ever been in love that we finally see our heroine bud with romantic whimsy (something only vaguely hinted at, and perhaps only accidentally so, up to this point). It is sad that we do not see Séraphine in this kind of close personal relationship until so late in the film, and I wonder if it was simply to point out that she had no close friends (something which probably should have been emphasized earlier on), or if this is just an oversight of the script.

For much of the film, Séraphine is relatively silent. She has little opportunity to tell her tale and the film doesn’t waste too much time telling it for her. If the idea is that she is an ordinary person doing extraordinary things, it seems a bit of a back-handed compliment that the film doesn’t do much to emphasize her “ordinariness” other than to show her in one of two states: cleaning and painting. In fact, throughout the film the audience barely gets to know Séraphine at all, aside from her religious faith and almost-religious love of nature. Not from the script, anyway.

No, it is not through the story itself that the audience gets to know Séraphine. It is through Yolande Moreau’s aching portrayal of her. What the film doesn’t allow her in terms of dialogue, Moreau conveys with a lingering glance and the tiniest curve of a smile. With her outstretched arms Moreau conveys a rapturous joy; with her downcast eyes, a timidity that undermines her greater passion.

The story of Séraphine de Senlis perhaps deserves a finer film, but there is no finer actress. Moreau plays Séraphine with an understated complexity that only a truly great performer can convey—particularly with little speech to assist her. Moreau’s Séraphine is whimsical, naïve, audacious, gentle, obsessive, sincere, moody, perhaps a little slow, and deeply devout, with a child-like sense of wonder and awe and an equally child-like petulance, lack of responsibility, and secret craving for attention. Séraphine is not made out to be a beatific figure of divine inspiration and disposition; she is flawed, humble, and ordinary, just as every other “extraordinary” artist, despite their massive talents, is still just ordinary.

This is no story of a tortured artist, like other similarly single-named films about painters (Pollok, Frida, Basquiat). Séraphine is not driven by a drug addiction, sex addiction, or alcohol addiction (though she does like her homemade wine). She is driven by God (and a touch of madness), but not in the same way as the Italian Renaissance painters were, painting enormous and ungainly tributes to Christ and the Virgin Mother covering whole walls and ceilings as a celebration of their faith (or of the Church’s iron grip on society; either way); no, Séraphine is a lover of nature, and so paints vivid pictures of brilliantly-colored fruits and flowers that are almost macabre, seeming to reflect her own fragmented psyche, torn between ecstasy and inner horror. Her flowers, painted in colors she mixed herself with methods and materials she never revealed, look almost as if they wriggle with life; gorgeous pictures that could just as easily be of insects or fanged slashes of flesh as of the local flora, a psychotic landscape teetering on the edges of profound beauty and total madness.

Yolande Moreau finds this balance and displays it with heartbreaking authenticity. In her dowdy appearance and hunched-over gait we see her strength and humility. With her full smile we see a pure, undiluted joy, one that could make God Himself weep. With her angry, self-pitying outbursts we see a child’s over-simplistic and self-centered comprehension of things too big for her to understand. Moreau embodies Séraphine’s own psychological tug-of-war with gentility and honor; while the film itself is a little sloppy, Moreau’s performance is nothing short of extraordinary. While the film fumbles around with too many characters and too many side stories, Moreau is a quiet juggernaut. While Séraphine is a flawed film, Séraphine’s own flaws are brought to life with exquisite tenderness and yearning by the incomparable Moreau.

Séraphine plays at the Detroit Film Theatre Friday, July 10th through Sunday, July 19th. See website for showtimes and ticket information.

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.

Imagine a Japan in which Godzilla and Gomera still exist…the catch is, people no longer care. Imagine also that to fight these oversized beasts, select men are chosen by the Monster Defense Bureau to be electrocuted into a larger-than-life size (don’t ask for the scientifics behind that). Imagine still that these fights are filmed and broadcast live on local TV—at roughly 2:00AM and with abysmally low ratings. Big Man Japan, the brain-child of writer-director Hitoshi Matsumoto (who also plays the title character), is a wonderfully absurdist frolic through a modern-day Japan still plagued with the oversized monsters of its kaiju heyday, with a cheeky self-aware quality that both sends up this old monster movie genre while also paying homage to it, and making our ne’er-do-well protagonist both an object of humor as well as one of sympathy.

Daisato (Matsumoto, one of Japan’s top comedians) is a nobody. A slacker who can’t keep a job or a wife, Daisato is neither a dynamic nor a terribly interesting character—except for his terrifically interesting line of work. Daisato is “Big Man Japan,” just one in a long line of men (including his father and grandfather) chosen to fight these alien monsters and defend Japan against their invasion and destruction. The film we watch is the interview footage taken of Daisato and the people in his life, as well as footage of his battles. The interviews with Daisato (or, “Big Sato”) are rather boring—lengthy, uncut shots of him stuck in one awkward pause after another, with nothing of interest to say. The narrator tries valiantly to make his interviews more compelling…but with little success. Big Sato, aside from getting big and fighting monsters, is actually kind of a loser, not to mention rather boring

Despite the fact that, in the beginning, the audience is somewhat encouraged to laugh at this hapless man, Big Sato becomes a sympathetic character as the film progresses. Caught in a completely absurd world in a profession that is widely disrespected, Sato is simply trying to make the best of it—to take care of his ailing, senile grandfather (“The Fourth” in his family’s line of Big Men) and to provide from a distance for his estranged daughter and philandering wife. The whole thing becomes almost heartbreaking—shlub that he is, he still tries his hardest, and gets no thanks from those he supports in his family and the many more citizens of Tokyo he protects (they only accuse him of wasting electricity and ruining their property, as told by the graffiti found on the walls outside of Sato’s home and over the electric plants he frequents to get “juiced”). The world is ready to write him off as a relic of a former era, one with no purpose in this modern world and little more than a social nuisance.

It wasn’t always so. Sato reflects on the days when there were many in the Big profession, hearkening back to a time when Big Men were praised and respected—here we see echoes of Disney/Pixar’s The Incredibles (which itself has faint echoes of Watchmen), when the superheroes were killed off or forced into hiding, and no longer were respected by the people they protected, complete with “newsreels” of the glory days. Yes, Big Sato is the last in a long, proud line of Big Men, but their era has come and it is he who is left fighting a battle that no one—not the public, not the government, not his family, not even his agent—even considers relevant anymore. The public is more eager to rise up and cheer against Big Sato at any given opportunity (a fight he loses brings in his highest ratings) than they are to support him.

There is a tinge of sadness here that comes with this sympathetic character falling victim to the shifting tides of public opinion, but this film is ultimately a comedy, loaded up with bizarre monsters and even more bizarre situations. A lengthy scene of “the ritual” (leading up to Sato’s transformation) is endcapped with numerous people involved in it calling it completely unnecessary (with the added irony of shooting a retake for the camera). The monsters themselves are a collection of absurdist delight, from the Strangling Monster with the comb-over to the Stink Monster who engages Sato in an absurdly normal conversation. While oftentimes the comedic tones of a foreign-language film are, well, lost in translation (so to speak), Big Man Japan offers an almost slapstick and also very dry humor that translates easily into any language, whether that be in Sato’s impassioned insistence that no sponsorship should be placed on his hips (cut to: his four-story hips, plastered in sponsorship) or in the perfectly-framed shot of him normal-sized standing in his Big-sized purple briefs awaiting transformation (a big purple tent with teeny-tiny legs).

The graphics are cheesy and bad, but this is also part of the film’s humor, playing off the comically bad special effects of the old kaiju monster movies. Big Man Japan is nothing if not excruciatingly self-aware, and it is this self-awareness which enables it to be an astute social commentary, a comedic homage of a classic cinematic genre, a deceptively clever mockumentary, and a fairly straightforward underdog tale…all at once.

Following in the tradition of classic mockumentaries like This is Spinal Tap and Best in Show (and really anything else from the Christopher Guest cannon), Big Man Japan takes such real-life absurdism and transcends it into this literally larger-than-life universe where the fantastic is simply mundane. Big Man Japan is a breath of fresh air in a cinematic climate that is too often stale. It is definitely…odd…but that’s what also makes it great. It is a freakishly funny triumph for first-time writer/director Matsumoto, on the level of writer-comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat. In the end, you’ll root for Big Man…or, you won’t really be sure what you’re rooting for, but at least you’ll be having fun while doing it.

Big Man Japan plays Friday, June 26th-Sunday, July 12th at the Detroit Film Theatre.  See website for details.

One word that I have seen repeatedly used to describe Bent Hamer’s dramedy on the Golden Years is “quiet.” Yes, this is a quiet film—long, lingering scenes dwelling on protagonist Odd Horten’s deeply-lined expressive face; meandering moments when the camera wanders away from Odd’s adventures and just kind of moseys along streetscapes with a tinkling, pared-down soundtrack; Odd’s stoic acceptance of the random and bizarre circumstances he finds himself in—it is deadpan to a fault, understated to the point of being, well…kind of boring.

It’s a coming-of-age tale for the elderly, following a man who, up until the day of his retirement, never fully learned how to enjoy life. After a series of simple, unrelated, accidental happenstances—none of which singularly amount to much but the sum of all ultimately leading to Odd’s late-life awakening—Mr. Horten comes to fully understand the joie de vivre, and learns to seize life by the horns, live every moment as if it were your last, carpe diem and the like.

Which is cute. Terribly, affectaciously cute.

Perhaps O’Horten is only guilty of its own Nordic reserve, cherishing more the quiet things left unsaid that the more in-your-face tactics of similarly-themed American films (About Schmidt comes to mind here, an equally affected though much more effective film ruminating on a man’s feelings of uselessness and powerlessness that comes from retirement after decades of regimented and purposeful work and, by extension, the greater societal dismissiveness of the elderly). Perhaps the film cannot be faulted for being at once painfully slow-moving yet equally painfully saccharine. Perhaps Norwegian filmmaker Hamer has been too nearly influenced by his Dogme 95 friends in nearby Denmark, espousing (among other things) the rejection of flashy Hollywood ideals.

Perhaps. Or perhaps this is just simply a poorly-crafted film, opting for the more sickly-sweet (and less challenging) approach to the humiliations and regrets of aging as opposed to the infinite possibilities with a more probing, more psychologically devastating approach (hell, classic film noir showpiece Sunset Boulevard did a better job at showcasing a person’s fragile state when confronted with the inescapable process of aging). The problem with this film is not necessarily in its slow pace and deadpan demeanor—in fact, if the film hadn’t so readily devolved into a Spielbergien heartstring-tugger, this sort of quiet, understated approach could have served it particularly well.

The problem is that the very basic attributes of the character Odd Horten that we are supposed to understand are never really explored—we assume he has led a life of quiet solitude, one wholly dedicated to his job, observing a strictly regimented routine revolving around his work as a conductor, the only thing in his life that gives him purpose. Yes, surely we can assume all of these things, though save for a handful of actual quotes from other characters in the story that make Odd out to be something of a fuddy-duddy, we never really see this. Nor do we see his own psychological duress when faced with what we assume to be his sudden feelings of purposelessness. Sure, we can assume his aimless wanderings are an outward symptom of such feelings of no longer having a place…just as easily as we can assume, from his passive, stoic expression and seemingly absolute lack of awareness of the peculiarities happening around him, that none of it fazes him in the least and he just so happens to be having a Very Strange Day(s).

From attempting to climb a fire escape to a friend’s home and spending the night in a small boy’s bedroom (which sounds like the beginning of a very different kind of film but rest assured, it is all perfectly innocent) to a very droll comedy of errors in trying to find someone at an airport (a scene that is probably the best example of dry humor in the film but is also the most disposable) to stumbling upon a drunk man in the street while wearing women’s boots (“They’re not mine,” says Odd simply) and returning to the man’s home for an eye-opening evening of carpe diem adventure (this being the exact point at which the movie sheds its skin of stoic removal and becomes a full-blown emotional manipulator), Odd’s adventures suffer from a kind of disconnect, so that viewers are never really sure how exactly we got from Point A to Point Weepy.

In the end, everything works out quite nicely for Odd, as things so often do in these kinds of films. The emotional catharsis has been had, and we all move on with our lives more satisfied in knowing that even in old age it’s never too late to live. This is all wonderful and uplifting; I just wish this message had been a little less hammered-over-the-viewers’-heads-in-the-last-20-minutes and more carefully and thoughtfully explored throughout the film, leading to a catharsis that seemed to make a little more sense for this particular character, whom we never really even got to know.

O’Horten plays at the Detroit Film Theatre inside the DIA now through Sunday, June 28th.  See wesbite for details.

It Came From Detroit Official Trailer (New) from James R Petix on Vimeo.

“We are distinctly not marketable, which suits me just fine because I wouldn’t want it anyhow.”

Mick Collins (the Dirtbombs), It Came From Detroit

And in Detroit it stayed.

It Came From Detroit is perhaps one of the most culturally relevant documentaries of a particular time and place in music ever made. A documentary film five years in production (and almost mythic in stature—spoken of widely as the pinnacle tome on the Detroit “garage” scene, a claim made fervently by even those who have never seen it), It Came From Detroit chronicles some 20 years of Detroit’s thriving independent rock-and-roll subculture—Detroit “garage,” as it came to be known all over the world.

It Came From Detroit looks at this music scene as it evolved over two decades, but also approaches weightier discussions such as the price of fame. Filmed at the time the White Stripes had already skyrocketed into international superstardom, the filmmakers had the unique opportunity to document the genesis of the international spotlight on Detroit (referred to at the time as “the next Seattle” by a number of international media outlets) as well as the aftermath, when the rest of the world had moved on.

It Came From Detroit is a thorough and detailed chronicle of Detroit’s underground indie rock scene. What started as a bunch of record-collecting music geeks who lived, breathed, ate, and DEFINITELY drank music and ended up forming bands because, well, they lived in Detroit and it was so bleak they had nothing to do but to create, then became an international phenomenon, a whole genre of its own. They borrowed and plundered from from rock’s greatest eras, fusing soul, funk, ‘60s psychedelic, pop, punk, mod, classic country, Ziggy Stardust glam, and straightforward guitar-driven rock into a new hybrid later dubbed “garage.” Director James Petix interviews dozens of musicians and fans to document the rise of this so-called “garage” scene, from Mick Collins and Dan Kroha of the Gories all the way to Dan and Tracee Mae Miller of Blanche and everyone in-between—the Hentchmen, Electric Six, the Von Bondies, the Dirtbombs, the Sights, the Detroit Cobras, the Paybacks, and more are given their due diligence as being integral parts of this scene. As are the White Stripes.

What I like about this film is that it is not just a documentary of one band but of the scene as a whole. It would have been easy to make this whole film into a sort of “one degree of Jack White” spectacle, presenting all of these other equally talented artists as only being relevant inasmuch as they existed in Jack White’s shadow, and capitalizing on his fame to help promote the product. While the film does allow the rise of the White Stripes a certain platform of importance, it is only to show how this fame (and consequent spotlight on Detroit) did (or did not) effect the rest of the substantial group of talented and passionate musicians. Yes, the White Stripes are entirely relevant and no discussion of the Detroit “garage” scene can be held without in some way acknowledging their contribution to it, but largely because of the way their increasing fame changed things back at home.

This film feels like part homage, part eulogy, and part forewarning: it is noted by several interviewees that things were different before anyone got big, before anyone started touring, before anyone was on the cover of NME. This “before” time (the long long ago) is spoken of with almost a kind of wistfulness, a paternal sort of “back in my day.” Discourse regarding the White Stripes’ rise to fame is tinged with a sense of the bittersweet, hinted at being “the beginning of the end.” There was a distinct energy unlike anything happening anywhere else, an energy unique to Detroit largely because of the bleakness here, the sheer impossibility of ever landing a record contract or “making it.” As a musician, you simply had nothing to lose. You did it purely for the love of the music.

Once what was labeled as Detroit “garage” music (a label most of the subjects interviewed here bristle at) started making headlines in (inter)national media, the scene had changed irreversibly. It was no longer just “ours;” suddenly the whole world wanted a piece of it. Competition became vicious, friends became enemies, and just as quickly as all that attention had come it left once again, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. The message throughout the film is the same: “Be careful what you wish for.”

But through it all, here in Detroit it was only ever really about the music, and that’s how it ultimately remained, even after Spin and Rolling Stone declared Detroit garage “dead” (a declaration that was ironically something of a relief). That same “garage” (or indie, or post-punk, or whatever else you might want to call it) scene still exists, and it is as strong now as it ever was before. The same 40 or so record geeks who kick-started the whole trend are still here, still playing, still forming new bands out of the ashes of old ones. And now, there is a whole wave of new bands to carry on the torch: kids who probably grew up listening to the Gories and the Hentchmen who finally decided to pick up a guitar and follow their lead. And much like those who came before them, these bands have no delusions of fame. Much like their forefathers, they are musicians. They aren’t trying to make it because there is no making it (and perhaps they know this now better than their predecessors did before); they play music to escape from soul-sucking day jobs and because they simply love it—they are fans first, and musicians second.

James, Sarah and Rich Hansen at the Lager House

This is the ultimate fan film for anyone interested or involved in Detroit’s music scene, and for any music lover in general. There is a wealth of interesting factoids for a fanboy or purist to memorize and spit back out at the appropriate opportunity. This is a film made by fans for fans, a time capsule of this particular scene at this particular time. And while the scene will never again be what it once was—disregarded, neglected, ignored—what it has become is something far more valuable: incorrigible, unwavering, permanent.

It Came From Detroit closes with a series of shots of confused musicians who had clearly just been asked why they choose to stay in Detroit, and their answers are resoundingly unanimous: because they can’t imagine being anywhere else (with an underlying sense of “what kind of stupid question is that?”, as if the answer should be so obvious). They choose to stay here—even those who have made a career of their music who could live in any other city in the world. They want to be here—even after a grueling tour they look forward to returning home, despite all of home’s many problems. The music is still alive here: and that’s what makes it so rewarding.

The final cut of It Came From Detroit is now complete and will be screened May 20th and 21st at the Magic Bag in Ferndale. After so many years in production and so much local coverage of the film already (including on this website), when I had the chance to speak with director James Petix I wanted to approach my conversation with him with the filter of five years having passed and much having changed since it was shot. In many ways the film is still entirely relevant to the current music culture in Detroit (and most of the musicians featured still play around town), but it also has a bit of a dated feel—Danny Methric is interviewed as the guitarist for the Paybacks, long before that band dissolved and he formed the Muggs; Marcie Bolen was still in the Von Bondies and Silverghost didn’t yet exist; Ryan Allen and all his bands weren’t around yet, and neither was the acerbic, wonderfully elitist music blog named after one of the songs written by one of Ryan Allen’s bands. Most of these people have moved on or moved forward, in one capacity or another, and a whole new crop of eager and enthusiastic young musicians have jumped onstage, guitars in hand, to fill in the voids. Bands like New Grenada, Pas/Cal, Millions of Brazilians, Zoos of Berlin, Deastro, Champions of Breakfast, Silverghost, the Nice Device, the Silent Years, the Hard Lessons, Four Hour Friends, Friendly Foes, Lightning Love, the Muggs, the Pop Project, SikSik Nation, SSM…and this is just scratching the surface of Detroit’s nü-garage scene (even the Metro Times Blowout, né the Hamtramck Blowout, with its feature of some 200+ bands annually and going on 12 years running, still can’t begin to encompass all the great music currently happening in and around the city). I was interested in looking back at the film as an archival piece, and reflecting on how things have changed even more since the film was shot (but also how they’ve stayed the same).

Nicole Rupersburg: The film documents a certain specific “scene” in Detroit, that existed at a certain time. How has the “scene” changed?

James Petix: Our film documents a group of friends that all played in rock bands in the same 3 or 4 bars in Detroit from the late ‘90s until the mid-2000s. At first the scene was small and close knit. As it became more popular in town there were more bands that were influenced by the scene and thus it grew. Eventually a couple bands got some
recognition outside Detroit and allowed the scene to grow again. As the scene continued to grow in popularity, more and more media attention was placed on them. Eventually, for whatever reason, the media stopped paying attention and didn’t cover the Detroit scene as much. Some bands broke up, some musicians moved away, some formed brand new bands—but those are all normal things that would have happened whether the media was watching or not.

James Petix, Director, It Came From Detroit

One thing that never changed was the music. It was always consistent. Perhaps it got better as musicians naturally tend to do, but it never changed to match the newest trend.

NR: What do you think about bands like the Silent Years and the Hard Lessons, who are fairly new bands getting a lot of national attention, who surfaced after this doc was shot? How do they fit in with this “scene”?

JP: I’m sure those bands were in the crowd watching the Dirtbombs and White Stripes in the heyday of the scene. They know what a good Detroit rock show is like and they’ve carried the torch in that vein. There’s a pretty high bar for musicians in this town and if they’ve gotten any success outside the city, that means they’ve reached that level.

NR: Why do you think Detroit bands like the Von Bondies and the Dirtbombs who have flirted with fame (and still do) but never quite achieved it?

JP: I think both of those bands have been able to make a career out of music and therefore are successful. If you measure success only by the level of fame they’ve achieved, then most people are going to come up short. Celebrities have to be an elite group or else everyone would be one!

NR: Do you think Detroit artists have been resistant to major-label deals and the national spotlight because there is a strong elitist perception here in Detroit that mainstream equals selling out, that a band’s credibility and their music’s authenticity is destroyed by a record deal?

JP: No, I’m sure all these bands are more than eager to sell their music to a commercial or sign a major record deal, given the right opportunity. That’s not selling out, that’s making a living. However, there are strings attached to major labels that independent minded musicians like the ones in Detroit might want to avoid.

NR: Do you think the fame of the White Stripes had a counter-effect on other Detroit bands, who saw the end results and decided not to pursue anything more?

JP: Yes, of course. I think it put a lot of pressure for the scene to come up with the “next big thing.” Some bands tried to step up and be that, but I think (knowing what I know now) that feat was probably impossible to achieve. The White Stripes were a phenomenon. They were not only very good at what they do, but they were smart enough to be at the right place at the right time. In the end, it helped a lot of bands grow to a bigger audience outside of Detroit, so that’s a very good thing.

NR: Is the music still pure, or has the kiss of fame (from the White Stripes and from previous major media attention) destroyed it?

JP: Not at all! The whole reason this scene is worth talking about is because they didn’t change who they are to meet some media expectation of what “garage rock” is or isn’t. That’s what makes this group special and why I chose to make a film about them.