Buffalo '66

Buffalo '66
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118789]

The Gist:
Vincent Gallo is a man who has just been released from prison. He is presented as highly agitated and eccentric. As the movie progresses, his character delves into the gray ranges of psychosis. Like when he kidnaps a girl, Christina Ricci, to take to his parents to gain their long sought after approval and acknowledgment. While he does so, he is so emotionally abusive to Ricci that we wonder we she doesn't just run away, for he is a truly terrible kidnapper (for instance, leaving her in the car with the keys in the ignition, while he goes to take a leak). As the film goes on we get a lot about his character, the scene with his parents giving insight to his irrational rage and fear of intimacy. However, we don't get a sense of who Ricci is or why she stays with him (besides a strong performance from her that offers at least a little illumination). The film gives a feeling of being disjointed, unbalanced. It's stylistic choices do help ground that impression, offering small moments of odd framing and jump cuts and weird little home movie flashbacks. However, in the end the movie fails. One reason is Ricci's unclear motivations toward the beginning of the film. It becomes a flaw in the narrative logic that is hard to overlook. Another reason is that it's just a hard film to get into. It was odd because the technical aspects of the film are really fascinating, but the film itself felt sort of soulless. As if it were a collection of powerful impressions that Gallo tried to piece together and assumed some cohesive whole would result. It's fragmented and ugly and you spend most of the time disliking his character. But it is interesting filmmaking, for whatever that's worth. Many scenes are filled with meaning that are enhanced by the unique stylistic choices mentioned earlier, and its clear that a great amount of thought went into the project. But if you're going to watch interesting filmmaking, you can do so in films more compelling and enjoyable than this.

On Another Note:
Many who take fault with this director throw around the words "self-indulgent". I do not, mainly because if the movie wasn't so fascinatingly self-indulgent it would have just been some asshole who kidnaps a girl, freaks out about her touching him, hates his parents, goes to kill some old field goal kicker for the Buffalo Bills, and inexplicably falls in love by the end of it. Without indulgence this film is kind of pointless.