This is some kind of a brilliant movie. Cassavetes’ other films typically seem very hermetic—a small cast of characters in a very singular locale, a little self-contained world of histrionics and flagrant emotions. But here, the scope is broader, the characters travel about and interact with seemingly “ordinary” people. Much of the film has the vibe of a fish-out-of-water comedy: as if the characters from Cassavetes’ other films woke up in their late middle ages, disoriented, probably hungover, suddenly realizing they are completely out of place in the world and that their children hate them. It’s all very humorous. I laughed, anyway.
The basic plot tells of a brother and sister. The brother, played by Cassavetes, drinks heavily and sleeps with a different woman or two each night—his young son runs away from him in terror. The sister, played by Gena Rowlands, loves obsessively and suffocatingly, and is in the process of unwillingly being divorced—her daughter tells her, deadpan, that she hates living with her. Those scenes with their children are pretty funny.
Even when it’s not outright funny, the film’s got a sublimely woozy, jazzy atmosphere; not coincidentally, both of the main characters pass out within the first half hour or so. The pace is relaxed. Unless YouTube was up to some hijinks, there seems to be a lot of almost subliminal jump cuts, as if the movie is about to fall asleep. YouTube definitely contributed a foggy haze, though I think some of that must have been there to begin with. Early on, much of the dialogue consists of hilarious non sequiturs. Cassavetes himself looks like a terminally exhausted demon jester, grinning devilishly while appearing to be on his last legs. The best scenes occur in the dark, with one or two light sources illuminating the characters, and some laid-back jazz playing in the background. It’s mesmerizing, watching these people go about their gradual self-destruction in such an easy atmosphere.
None of this is to say there’s no poignancy to be had. No, there’s poignancy aplenty. Only a few seconds after Cassavetes’ son runs away from him, as Cassavetes takes a beating from his son’s concerned stepfather, his son says repeatedly, pleadingly, that he loves him. The moment is all the more affecting for its abrupt switch from humor. And towards the end, Cassavetes’ devotion to his sister becomes very touching.
That part, toward the end, is where the film gets strange, with the arrival of a lot of farm animals and a musical interlude. The animals, though they afford the film its comedic highlight, felt a bit too much like farce; they fit with the general tone, but they perhaps push that tone a bit too hard. However, the heightened absurdity becomes perfectly justified by the film’s finale. Outside of a Herzog film, I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered such a transcendently absurd ending. It involves a thunderstorm, a goat, a naked man in a chair, and faces seen through rain-covered windows. It feels like a culmination, a refinement of the unreal world that Cassavetes’ characters inhabit, a world of incoherent emotions and mad gestures of love. At the same time, it feels just like the best moments in life, the moments that suddenly stand forth, when we’re acutely aware of not only them, their feeling of reality heightened and scintillating, but also of all the moments that they contain, all the events in our lives that have led up to them. It’s magnificent.
