FENCES AND FINGERNAILS, OR, A LITTLE CASSAVETES GOES A LONG WAY
The other night I went to see a "rugh cut/premiere" screening of West Roxbury raised Garth Donovan's second feature FENCES AND FINGERNAILS in Belmont. There was a good turnout (over 200), mostly family and friends/cast and crew and a smattering of other interested parties from the film and ideo community.
I wanted to like the movie, partly because I like Garth, like films done in the Cassavetes style, and because I so thoroughly disliked his first film, EVERBODY'S GOT ONE, a film about a screenwriter (how boring) done with a level of humor that makes JACKASS look sophisticated., that I felt a little guilty.
And like it I did, although among the people I talked to I was clearly in the minority. But there was plenty to like. Garth himself aims to please, with an amiable on screen persona. And his minimalist approach evoked more the Kurasmaki brothers than John Cassavetes. This is partly aided by the performance by his sister Savann in the seemingly lead role of Samantha. With the exception of one scene, her character is asked to express a small emotional range, so, like a Kurisake heroine, we are forced to read things into her thoughts and feelings that aren't necessarily expressed.
she also remended me of the one good thing in the otherwise deplorable movie THE GOOD GIRl - Jennifer Anniston's title role, where a close up on her mostly expressionless face told volumns And the core story, about a young woman arriving at self-determination (I think), however familiar a story it is , remains compelling.
BUT - in terms of style, it did feel like a Cassavettes wannabe blended with Dogma 95, with no clear understanding of either of those styles. Even if he was trying to capture a documentary feel, there were way too many out of focus shots and an unevenness in framing and lighting that were more distracting than illumating. Unlike the filmmakers he aspires to , there was no coherent style. And he didn't do enough with his sister. There were at least two scenes where a reaction shot would have provided greater emotional depth.
But there are problems with the narrative as well. I think it's the woman's story, but Garth, who plays and is her borther, has what seems to be a parallel story about his own battle with alcohoism. How else to explain a ridiculous scene of his nameless lover waking up to find out that he ha peed in his bed, or the crude expolistion in a scene where he picks up a woman at an AA meeting (that is not supposed to happen in the earlydays of AA), and tells her his life story. It does serve to get us back to the hockey scenes at the very first part of the movie, a motif that has been lost for 75 minutes, but it is dramatically clumsy The expository nature of this scene fails to garner less emotional support for his charcter than any single silent shot of his sister. If he is todo further editing, and he needs to, khe needs to cut down on his own scenes, and get the audience to follow the emotional trajectory of Samantha.
Garth is an enthusiastic and determined filmmaker. But his anarcictecknique doesn't work, because he doesn't seem to understand the very conventions of filmmaking he's either trying to overthrow or is utterly ignorant of. Cassevetes' approach to filmmaking resulted in several masterworks that revealed the bottoms of the souls of human beings. In making this intensely personal film mostly about real family situations, he does a disservice to his subject matter. Certainly, Garth is too close to his subject matter to gain the aesthetic distance the project needs.
as I said, I did like sitting through the film, and, I know, make films about what you know, But Eugene O"Neill was a master playwright before he wrote his most intensely personal and painful play LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT. Garth, a filmmaker not without talent and knowledge, ought to have waited. Both he and his family could have been better served.
I wanted to like the movie, partly because I like Garth, like films done in the Cassavetes style, and because I so thoroughly disliked his first film, EVERBODY'S GOT ONE, a film about a screenwriter (how boring) done with a level of humor that makes JACKASS look sophisticated., that I felt a little guilty.
And like it I did, although among the people I talked to I was clearly in the minority. But there was plenty to like. Garth himself aims to please, with an amiable on screen persona. And his minimalist approach evoked more the Kurasmaki brothers than John Cassavetes. This is partly aided by the performance by his sister Savann in the seemingly lead role of Samantha. With the exception of one scene, her character is asked to express a small emotional range, so, like a Kurisake heroine, we are forced to read things into her thoughts and feelings that aren't necessarily expressed.
she also remended me of the one good thing in the otherwise deplorable movie THE GOOD GIRl - Jennifer Anniston's title role, where a close up on her mostly expressionless face told volumns And the core story, about a young woman arriving at self-determination (I think), however familiar a story it is , remains compelling.
BUT - in terms of style, it did feel like a Cassavettes wannabe blended with Dogma 95, with no clear understanding of either of those styles. Even if he was trying to capture a documentary feel, there were way too many out of focus shots and an unevenness in framing and lighting that were more distracting than illumating. Unlike the filmmakers he aspires to , there was no coherent style. And he didn't do enough with his sister. There were at least two scenes where a reaction shot would have provided greater emotional depth.
But there are problems with the narrative as well. I think it's the woman's story, but Garth, who plays and is her borther, has what seems to be a parallel story about his own battle with alcohoism. How else to explain a ridiculous scene of his nameless lover waking up to find out that he ha peed in his bed, or the crude expolistion in a scene where he picks up a woman at an AA meeting (that is not supposed to happen in the earlydays of AA), and tells her his life story. It does serve to get us back to the hockey scenes at the very first part of the movie, a motif that has been lost for 75 minutes, but it is dramatically clumsy The expository nature of this scene fails to garner less emotional support for his charcter than any single silent shot of his sister. If he is todo further editing, and he needs to, khe needs to cut down on his own scenes, and get the audience to follow the emotional trajectory of Samantha.
Garth is an enthusiastic and determined filmmaker. But his anarcictecknique doesn't work, because he doesn't seem to understand the very conventions of filmmaking he's either trying to overthrow or is utterly ignorant of. Cassevetes' approach to filmmaking resulted in several masterworks that revealed the bottoms of the souls of human beings. In making this intensely personal film mostly about real family situations, he does a disservice to his subject matter. Certainly, Garth is too close to his subject matter to gain the aesthetic distance the project needs.
as I said, I did like sitting through the film, and, I know, make films about what you know, But Eugene O"Neill was a master playwright before he wrote his most intensely personal and painful play LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT. Garth, a filmmaker not without talent and knowledge, ought to have waited. Both he and his family could have been better served.
1 Comments:
Geez, someone likes cassavetes.
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