Screen Scene
LIVING IN OBLIVION [1995. Directed by Tom DiCillo. Cast: Steve Buscemi, Catherine Keener, James LeGros. SonyColumbia Home Video. 90 mins.]
Pop quiz. Hands up and time out for a little self-centered honesty.
Okay, show-biz mongers: How many of you aspiring Hollywood hyphenates out there in serious movie-movie wonderland are willing to bite off Tom DiCillo's Living in Oblivion?
Time's up. Try a simple concept: It's a nightmare.
Living in Oblivion is one of those wickedly whacked-out, tongue-in-cheek black comedies that vividly lives out its acerbic fantasy. After all, who could possibly resist Nick Reve's sardonic daydream of standing in front of a fawning movie awards audience as he graciously accepts his award as best film director for ... yes, you've got it Living in Oblivion.
The afterlife should be like this?!?
Think about it. Every second of any film (this one runs 90 minutes) has to be planned, blocked, and practiced ... preferabty sometime in advance. In a business whose conventional wisdom says 20 set-ups a day is the industry norm, every shot will probably be done no less than a half-dozen times. It's therefore no wonder DiCillo has given his film the title he has. His view of independent cinema has to be living in oblivion. Remember the twenty furious set-ups a day? That's the norm on a routine budget Independent filmmaking is a no-frills sort of cinematic experience.
Built around three diabolically temperamental set-ups, the film lampoons the frustration of close-to-the-bone filmmaking. From narcissistic actors to malfunctioning equipment. Reve has to muster his reserves to survive yet another of a horrifying never-ending miasma of future blown takes. The fact that his assistant director and cinematographer are in the midst of a spat; his one-eyed leading man wants to bed every female in the crew on sight; and his players insist upon upstaging each other left and right, only increases the pressure.
Thankfully, Living in Oblivion's sharp edged humor never falters. But as with all satire, there's a kernel of uneasy truth at the bottom of this shaggy dog of a bag of popped corn. For making movies is (despite the supposed glamour) very hard work. And in a business where money is burned reflexively - indeed, almost obliviously- working on the fringes can be a sort of living hell.
As anyone who's attempted these sorts of projects well knows, the bottom line is what ends on screen. So try sitting in the eye of the filmic hurricane for a few minutes. Buscemi's daffy-ducked incredulity fuels the wild-eyed pathos surrounding writer/director Reve. Long a favorite of independent real-life filmmakers, Buscemi is perfectly cast as a strung-out starving artist who's nearly . . . not quite, but very nearly ... at the end of his celluloid rope.
Still, as you double-feature week-end cinema warriors might dreamily sigh of the balmy west coast: What price Hollywood?
If DiCillo's response is perhaps a little less acidic than Robert Altman's earlier The Player, it's only because he's a younger man and he hasn't been criticalIy boxed around the ears for the last couple of decades. The obvious gauge will be for him to revisit the topic in twenty or so years.
The kooky and fragile optimism of Oblivion should serve as a warning for any future "players" out there. At the very least, it should definitely serve as mandatory viewing for any Hollywood neophyte who confidently points to the silver screen and says, "I can do that." Guess again.
SAFE [1995. Directed by Todd Haynes. Cast: Julianne Moore, Xander Berkeley, Peter Friedman. SonyColumbia Home Video. 118 mins] Todd Haynes' obvious borrowing from Chantel Akerman so thoroughly permeates Safe, his film could be called the half-baked stateside sister of Akerman's legendary 1978 Les Rendezvous d'Anna.
As with most polemic revisions, Haynes' film popularizes its source by broadening the earlier film's intent. In this instance, Akerman's feminism is being reshaped to make it palatable for American audiences. Yet by shifting the central premise of that earlier film - a relentlessly detached clinical study of ennui - Haynes has smudged the meaning of his film's message.
This not-quite-so-deft sleight of hand seemingly makes Safe and Les Rendezvous d'Anna superfluous complementary narratives. They share a similar psychology and they commensurate over roughly the same issues. But in his attempt to smooth over Akerman's fingerprints, Haynes' off-beat investigation into feminine self-identity weakens the earlier film's raison d'être.
The existential dilemma of Akerman's master work lies in its penetrating investigation of an outwardly successful professional woman living an equally unsuccessful interpersonal life. The psychic unraveling of Akerman's Anna carries an understated schizophrenic wallop that haunts its viewer for some time afterward.
By contrast, Safe's underdeveloped conclusion diffuses its meaning in a far less subtle fashion. Julianne Moore is featured as Carol White, a San Fernando Valley housewife, whose domestic day to day is inexplicably shattered by an unnamed allergic reaction she's developed to her entire physical environment. Descending into despair, Carol finally finds an alternative community where she can be shielded from the chaos and germs of modem life. She fitfully comes to the conclusion that she must somehow learn to care tor herself.
After Haynes' prior pyrotechnics of Poison, Safe is remarkably restrained. But perhaps it's too restrained for its own good. For at the very least - and despite Akerman's determined glacial pace in Les Rendezvous d'Anna - that prior film made a virtue of Anna's disintegrating self-identity. Safe's Carol goes through a similar numbing psychological process, but Haynes' cinematic style detaches our sympathy from her and instead forces us to study her travails at an antiseptic distance.
There's no question but that the film gains a welcome tension once Carol moves from her home to the Wrenwood estate where she - like its other hypersensitive members - retreats for a much needed convalescence from society. And there can be no question but that for the numbers of men and women who suffer from allergic iIIness, Safe's comfort zone is serious indeed. But Haynes plays his characters in this film so hermetically, no one - including Carol herself - comes fully to life. Moore's Carol is a heroic acting effort, but empathetically elusive nonetheless.
Perhaps it's not accidental that the most vivid personalities in the film are her husband, Greg Pander (Xander Berkeley),and Wrenwood counselor, Peter Dunning (Peter Friedman). Serving as subliminal bookends to Carol's nearly indiscernible waning conscience, Greg and Peter wage silent battle over her exceedingly limited sense of self-understanding. Nothing is seemingly lost or gained over a weekend visit Greg makes to Wrenwood to explore her new home. But the die is cast between the many casual conversations we overhear during this pivotal sequence.
At the very least, Akerman's Anna is trapped in a psychodrama of her own making. But by leaving us guessing as to the sense of personal and social responsibility Carol feels for herself in Safe, Haynes forces us to do his work for him.
The result may be a safer theme. Yet it also comes at the expense of narrative clarity. There's no defining sense of personal autonomy in Haynes' Carol. Safe's uncomfortable netherworld depicting a reactive, other-defined femininity - as opposed to a proactive, self-defined female existence - says more about Haynes' view of women than any other statement he could make.