Southland Tales (2006) Review

In case you are wondering, you probably just won't get it.

Watch the Trailer here.

For the record I did warn you that my reviews weren't going to be of the latest films, mostly just what I pick up along the way.

This is the sight of Manface running away from a film.
Get used to it!

Someone lent me Southland Tales quite a while ago, but then it got packed up when I moved house so it's been caught up in the unboxing a bit.

I don't have much to say about it to be honest. I started watching it on the sofa with Manface who walked out after 10 minutes with his usual proclamation of 'this is sh**!' Although this time it was more of a 'this is sh**... right?'

It seems one thing Southland Tales is conclusively good at is making you doubt yourself in your boredom. It creates a real 'is it me, or him?' scenario which succeeds perfectly in perpetuating it's 'you just don't get it' culture. It's almost like an emotionally abusive partner; you should be aware that you're a little stupid for loving it, but instead it convinces you that if you don't love it it's because you're stupid.

In Manface's defence I could tell he tried really hard to stick around this time, but Southland Tales is massively trying. It almost became the third ever film I couldn't be bothered to finish.

Southland Tales is set in 2008, three years after a nuclear attack on Texas which has wiped out half of the state. Now America, and soon the world, is powered by a perpetual motion power called fluid karma rendering oil irrelevant. The main narrative follows Boxer Santos (Dwayne Johnson) an action movie star and the husband of a Senator's daughter who is suffering with amnesia. His struggle with identity is compacted as the lines between his forgotten past, blank present and imagined future blur. He is unknowingly having an affair with Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar) a porn star with a plan for total stardom starting with her 'topical' chat show, album, energy drink and dubious ties with the Neo Marxism movement. Finally we have Ronald Taverner (Seann William Scott) an LAPD officer and another character suffering a bout of severe memory loss on the search for his supposed twin brother Roland.

If this sounds complicated, trust me its only the tip of a thoroughly and pointlessly convoluted iceberg. Usually I quite like this kind of hodgepodge of narrative, it adds a kind of chronological realism and allows the reader to pick for themselves what they deem relevant all the while desperately pondering over those they though not. In writing my summary I've missed out a lot, I've probably confused or mistaken even more.  However, trying to write a concise synopsis for the film kind of represents how I felt about watching it. I really couldn't be bothered. The effort of processing it genuinely isn't worth the payoff. I love Donne Darko (2001) but Richard Kelly has really missed the mark with this one.



The humour isn't quite funny, and it's failing presence ensures that the drama isn't quite dramatic. Instead it flops clumsily from side to side like a fish out of water.

The themes play out like an awkward discussion with a conspiracy theorist at a bar. (I don't know if this is a common occurrence for anyone else but it seems to happen to me a lot.) It skirts over a lot of points which it believes to be poignant in themselves and need no further analysis, doubt or explanation. It mocks your blind following of societal norms without considering the irony that it expects you to believe their ways just because it is 'blatantly' the truth. And if you don't, we'll then obviously you just didn't get it.

In its defence, Southland Tales had me really racking my brains for a long while afterwards. I really couldn't process how I felt about it and what I had taken from it. In that way I can compare it to David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977). (I'm not really a fan of Eraserhead but I am very aware that this is an insult. I disagree with the glutinous self-indulgent drama of it. But even Eraserhead wasn't obnoxious enough to last 3 hours, let alone 3 hours, 3 graphic novels and a full 'website experience'.) Most of the time I have fully processed a film by the time the lights go up, and further discussion mainly allows me to fully articulate these subliminal thoughts and feelings.

Eventually, I flicked through Rotten Tomatoes to find some positive reviews to assess what I had missed. The majority which seemed to be articulate have suspiciously vanished from their websites. Obviously another great conspiracy. The few which remained in their entirety seemed to merely hail Southland Tales as amazing but without bothering to explain why. I can't help but assume that they didn't really know as the review reeked of jumping on the 'you just don't get it' bandwagon.

I do feel that I could garner more from a second watching. But I really don't think another 3 hours of my time will be worth any epiphanies it could throw at me. (I use 'throw' deliberately as Kelly seems to take a 'fling enough and something will stick' philosophy to his second serving.) That and I really don't want to do it again.

Oh no Dwayne - Southland Tales (2006)

On the plus side Sarah Michelle Gellar plays a pastiche of her persona fantastically. Something about her usually always grates on me, but that's mostly because I believe she has an intelligence which doesn't equate to her roles. Dwayne Johnson, who is resentfully one of my favourite guilty pleasures, seems to understand the irony, but not have the subtlety to pull it off. (His idiosyncratic hand tic drove me mental with its obviousness.) As far as William Scott, I just felt really sorry for him. He clearly didn't get that it was bordering on spoof and you get the sense that he felt this was the role to finally save him from Stiffler. He plays the part fine, but he just didn't get what the part was. Also, loved the Moby soundtrack.

You can feel the panic of Kelly having to live up to his phenomenally celebrated debut. However, you can also sense enough arrogance to feel no pity. Kelly makes a very unsubtle attempt to tick the boxes of the auteur; defining his conceits whilst leading on from the successes of Donnie Darko;

1. End of the world scenario - check
2. Living character with bullet in the eye - check
3. Constant quotation of US high school exam board literature in order to feign learnedness - check

If anything I feel Southland Tales has only served to ruin Donnie Darko for me a little. Once you see a director/writer get something so wrong you can't help but wonder if previous efforts were a fluke. Ultimately I believe your own reading is far more important than the writers intended. However, establishing meaning and poignancy to something which is fundamentally shallow and empty kind of makes you one of the 'you just don't get it' brigade. I'm not saying this is the case with Donnie Darko, and to an extent it isn't completely true of Southland, but it still makes you wonder.

For something I didn't have much to say about I seem to have ranted quite a bit. I love that Southland Tales has driven such an impassioned response from me. However, I still kind of wish I could unwatch it. (If nothing else I could watch two far better films in the time I would save!)

Ps. And I forgot our unlikely narrator Justin Timberlake! I'm not even going to comment on that one.