East of Wallis a difficult film to classify. It defies pigeon-holing and slotting. Classification. It's not a documentary, because it's scripted. It has real people playing themselves (with two actorly exceptions), so it's not exactly fiction, even though it fits the bill of being "based on a true story." Even if it isn't. But, it could happen. That it doesn't goes a long way in explaining the nature of the real people involved. So, that's fiction "becoming" fact. In an interview with NPR, director Kate Beecroft, describes her film as "docufiction" filmed on location, sometimes documentary style "on the fly" with the actual people who live the daily lives depicted in the film. To paraphrase "Dragnet": "The names you are about to see are true. The story has been changed to project the innocent."
Tabatha Zimiga has lived on her husband's family horse farm for years after his death. She's raising three kids, a lot of horses—training them in a style similar to "Buck" Brannaman—and taking in strays...animals and kids, teens who through issues with their parents (addiction, incarceration, incompetence or indifference or just plain delinquency) live on the Zimiga farm working the land and the animals, and working on themselves.
I first heard of Zimiga and her South Dakota ranch on the news...probably PBS Newshour because I've lost interest in network news...and her unconventional approach to caring for all her charges. Tatted and head-shaved, she defies the conventions of ranch-owner, her property a collection of paddocks and mobile homes--horses and people house similarly--and she scrapes by a living training horses and selling them at auction, while also keeping her revolving door of kids fed, clothed and sheltered...and schooled. She's had sufficient life lived to understand...but not necessarily sanction...teen drama, keeping a wary eye on behavior, both human and equestrian. She has enough drama of her own.
Unlike most cowboys, she has an internet presence, posting on TikTok, showing off the kids' riding skills as well as the dexterity of her horses, all good marketing tools for showing off the animals before the weekend auction day.
Director Beecroft uses those videos to show the day-to-day, connecting and interlacing bits of story-fabric, providing background on the various interactions, all revolving around the hub of Tabatha, going to court seeking conservancy for new members of her makeshift brood, keeping truancy to a minimum, dealing with the slights and jolts of everyday ranch life...and not talking about the death of her husband, who committed suicide years before. This is one of the threads running through East of Wall because it affects her daughter Porshia (a really impressive performance) who aches to remember him as he was her mentor and taught her how to ride.
One keeps looking for artifice and the film is remarkably free of it—there are only two actors, Scoot McNairy (he played Woodie Guthrie in A Complete Unknown) and Jennifer Ehle who plays Tabatha's mother Tracey (her resume is so impressive and I've seen her in so many things that the way she insinuates into the role is, frankly, startling) but you can "sense" the actors from everybody else—even the makeshift stuff feels completely natural in this day and age of corporate takeover. But, when the real people playing their real selves (though fictionalized a bit) are on-screen, it's a truly eerie feeling. You feel like you're watching a documentary, despite the occasional beautiful landscape shot. Movies do a really good job of faking real. East of Wall isn't faking.
That becomes readily apparent during Tabatha's drunk monologue about finding her dead husband, which is one of the most riveting one shots I've ever seen. Raw, profane, and bitter, all expressed through a haze of repressed regret, it's a jaw-dropping sequence, repeatedly challenging the sense of reality and drama in an audience's mind. Sort of like real life.
Some have gone so far as to say the film is a modern "take" on the Western (if we're still pining for categorization). I'm not so sure one could call this a traditional Western per se, but if John Ford's entries are, in the end, about the struggles of making a community in a wasteland, then East of Wall certainly fills that bill.
"Seven simple rules of going into hiding: one, never trust a cop in a raincoat. Two, beware of enthusiasm and of love, both are temporary and quick to sway. Three, if asked if you care about the world's problems, look deep into the eyes of he who asks, he will never ask you again. Four, never give your real name. Five, if ever asked to look at yourself, don't. Six, never do anything the person standing in front of you cannot understand. And finally, seven, never create anything--it will be misinterpreted, it will chain you and follow you for the rest of your life."
Bob Dylan
Musicians performing on-stage use something called "foldback speakers" so that they can hear themselves accurately against the wash of sound coming from auditorium reverberation or the cacophony of crowd noise fighting against them—modern musicians use ear-buds to have their music pumped backed to them without any deleterious feed-back from similar music sources competing.
That little bit of insider trivia is what I was thinking about walking out ofA Complete Unknown, the new bio-pic of a slice of Bob Dylan's life as he was becoming more known and making a name (and history) for himself prowling around the Greenwich Village clubs, riding a burgeoning folk-music wave and expanding the subject matter of the genre like his heroes, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger into advocacy-folk or what would become known as "protest songs," which formed the soundtrack of the youth movement of the early 1960's.
Well, this one has his seal of approval, sticks to one actor as Dylan, and covers January 24, 1961 to July 25, 1965(when Dylan first arrived in New York City at the age of 19 to his controversial performance set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival). And it does a pretty good job of clearing away all the myths about Bob Dylan, his absences from the public eye (hard to believe these days, he's even done commercials), his changing personas more than Madonna or Bono, and just concentrates on that initial section where he became a performer, then The Brand New Thing, then The Highly Exploitable Thing, to The Voice of His Generation, all the while navigating the rigors of performing, the inanities of being a product, and the desire to start breaking things and doing something fresh.
Frankly, that's enough. It was never his mission to be understood, and the movie never tries to psychoanalyze or explain his actions, but merely the context into which he arrived and the way things changed once he started performing. He came in with talent and a poet's way of putting thoughts into words in a way no one had ever done before, inspired by folk music and its tendency towards metaphor.
That is immediately recognized by practitioners of the art—Pete Seeger (Edward Norton, wonderfully essaying the man as appeaser rather than rebel) and a hospitalized-by-Huntington's Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy, in a non-verbal performance), and he is promoted, signed by a label (Dan Fogler plays Columbia A & R guy Albert Grossman), and starts playing bigger venues, all the while already established folkies likeJoan Baez(Monica Barbaro) start interpreting his material for the mainstream. The maxim is "it's the singer, not the song" but Dylan's "voice" (as far as his writing) was so distinct, he bobbed up through the commercialization as the Genuine Article quickly and, with his ungussied-up vocal stylings, bereft of soothing harmonies and homogenizing orchestrations.
So...back to that foldback speaker: Imagine you're putting yourself out there, performance after performance, and you're leading the field. Then, you start hearing yourself over and over again and not necessarily your voice. People are singing your songs, and then imitating your songs—Pete Seeger's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" begets your "Blowin' In The Wind" and then that begets Phil Ochs' "There But For Fortune"—or imitating your composing-process, and then parroting and parodying your songs and then you're suddenly surrounded by the newest versions of "you" while (as movie-Dylan gripes) "you just want me singing 'Blowin' In The Wind' solo for the rest of my life." It's stifling. It's maddening. It makes you want a change.
But, that's not what your label wants. It's not what your manager wants. It's not what your fans want. They want the rebellion and the "new" sound to be what they're comfortable with...or what they're making money with. You want to create. They want to cash in. Or get their comforting nostalgia. No one gets it.
But it gets creepy. There's a scene in Don't Look Back where Dylan is talking to a fan and the exchange is this:
Fan: I just don't like any of the "Subterranean Homesick Blues" stuff.
Bob Dylan: Oh, you're that kind - I understand, right now.
Fan: It's not you. It doesn't sound like you at all!
Bob Dylan:
But, my friends, my friends were playing with me on that song. You
know, I have to give some work to my friends too. I mean, you don't mind
that, right? Huh? You don't mind them playing with me if they play the
guitar and drums and all that stuff, right?
Fan: It just doesn't sound like you at all. It sounds like you're having a good ole laugh.
Bob Dylan: Well, don't you like to have a good ole laugh once in awhile? Isn't that all right with you?
"That's not you." How the "homesick blues" does he know? Because he attended a concert? Because he bought himself a record? It's no wonder that at one point Dylan just blurted "Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything." See it as ingratitude if you must or see it as not "playing the game" but "you gotta do you" because "you" is what got you there in the first place. All artists go through this. Some have even rebelled. Some have got away with it. Some have not. Some have walked the tight-rope of practicality where you're either an "artist" or you pay the bills (you know...like we non-artists do).
A Complete Unknown is wonderful in every way for putting you not in Dylan's head but in his head-space. And if the man is still an enigma after you see it, you can, at least, understand why. If I have anything negative to say about it, it's that Ricky Nelsonsaid the same thing in just over three minutes.*That's efficient.
Now, I've gotta pay the bills, do what's expected of me: how is Chalamet? Spot on. Pretty amazing, actually, but I've never ever been disappointed by a Chalamet performance. Of course, he's prettier than Dylan, but, like Joaquin Phoenix did with Johnny Cash in director Mangold's previous music bio-pic I Walk the Line, he suggests Dylan rather than does a full-on imitation. He has a less-is-more approach which is entirely appropriate for the subject, but there's a nice touch that he brings to his Dylan which is lovely—a defiant, almost predatory stare, observing, analyzing, like a biding-his-time hawk. And, considering his vocal talents in Wonka, of course he can do a dead-on imitation of Dylan's singing style. You have to listen very closely to tell the difference between Chalamet's versions of Dylan's songs and the memories of the real deal.
"I Don't Like Feeling This, But I think He's Spoiled...or I Am"
Radio producer Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) has a full schedule of recording kids' questions that will make up one of those radio essays that show up all the time. He's a good listener, but his interactions are generic, asking open-ended questions to get a response. But, he gets a cry for help from his sister Viv (Gaby Hoffmann)—he hasn't heard from her for a year since their mother's death following an extended term of dementia and on the anniversary of it, they're talking, catching up. Viv's husband, a musician, has moved to Oakland for a job, and he's not coping, suffering from extreme bipolar disorder and she feels the need to help before something really bad happens. Johnny asks what she's gonna do with her kid (Woody Norman).
It's only for a week so Johnny flies from New York to Los Angeles and he'll stay with the kid, Jesse. Jesse's high maintenance and Johnny's low output—but he is a good listener. It's just the kid never stays in place, has a lot of energy, has a lot of questions, and although Johnny's moody, he's not always in the mood. He's never had kids, and in his "big" relationship, she left him. Now, he just sort of records...
Then, there's Jesse. He has a lot of questions, but most of them he keeps to himself because he's scared of them. He acts out, pretends he doesn't care, and plays "the orphan game," where, instead of being Jesse he pretends to be an orphan asking to be taken in. He's smart as a whip, but doesn't have any friends. He knows that Johnny's only temporary, but he misses his Mom and wonders why she's in Oakland and he's with Johnny. He asks Johnny why he and his mother don't get along. But, Johnny is better at asking questions than giving answers. Then, Johnny shows him his recording equipment.
"It's really cool in here!" he says, referring to the space in his head between the headphones. And, it is. It's also isolating, which can be good for concentration, but bad for interaction. But, during the "getting-to-know-each-other" phase, it comes in handy. And then Johnny's called and told he needs to do some recording in New York. "Would you like to go to New York?" he asks Jesse. "Yes" is his reply.
It's a bit of an open-ended question.
But, not to Viv. "You do NOT ask a child if he wants to go to New York without asking his mother first!" But, the ex is not improving, and without any other choices, and with Johnny's advocacy, she relents and Johnny takes Jesse to New York City to stay in his apartment, go to his recording sessions, and hang out, under Johnny's supervision. But, New York is a city that never sleeps and neither, evidently, does Jesse in New York. The city energizes him, makes him hyper and a little unruly, and Johnny snaps at him a couple times. This sends Jesse into a tail-spin—he's the farthest from his mother that he's ever been, he's spending time with strangers, and nothing is familiar. And Jesse's a little kid, and hasn't had the experience of handling his emotions for very long. It's difficult.
I loved C'mon C'mon, but then there is no way that I couldn't. Its elements are hard-wired into my DNA. My mother died of Alzheimer's. I know the pressures of dealing with lack of identity from them, and letting go of reality to keep them safe and happy...but more safe than anything. It's straight out of Lewis Carroll living with that disease and more times than you'd think you find yourself doing something counter to what makes sense. Because it's better for the person you love that you do.
And I did radio work and audio post-production for many (many) years, and I, too, thought it was "really cool" to live in the space between headphones. I became hyper-aware of sound, of it's qualities, it's speeds, it's up-ramps and fades, it's colors and qualities and textures. I took an audio recorder everywhere—on trips, on errands—trying to find that perfect sound (tough to do, as you never record what's making the sound so much as you're recording the space that it's in). Acoustically perfect rooms—with "dead" ambience—made me uncomfortable (nothing strange there, it does everybody, especially when you become aware of your own pulse!). I was much more comfortable being in "that" space.
And I was lousy at expressing my emotions. I suppressed them...until they exploded. Couldn't regulate them; I didn't think you had to. But, personality and mental status are like old cars. They don't work very well without some maintenance work. And sometimes—like with Alzheimer's—you have to let go of reality and look at the world objectively instead of subjectively, because sometimes the subjective is just plain wrong. And full-on brain repair? That's expensive. Maintenance is better. You get a lot more mileage that way.
Oh. And I love New York, too.
So, this one was as familiar and as comfortable as an old sweater and ratty slippers and there was no way that I could not be tickled by it. Sometimes you're challenged by a movie, sometimes you are taken someplace new—or some thought new—that you realize why you love movies so intensely. Sometimes, you're just moved by the proximity to life that art can achieve, even when presented in unfamiliar ways (like in black and white, for instance). Or the beauty of the image in a frame thoughtfully composed, but still giving you all the information you need.
That is being objective, though. Subjectively, I think it's one of the best movies of the year and I can't wait to show it to other people.
