12.05.2004
ulrich seidl's dog days
dog days is a film with an interesting gimmick-- austrian director ulrich seidl chose to shoot his tale of human oddities in a bland austrian suburb exclusively on days where the temperature went well into the nineties (fahrenheit). accordingly-- one can assume-- the sweat coating his impressively un-lovely cast is the real deal. days is seidl's first fiction film (he's known for offbeat and off-putting documentaries-- none of which i've seen), and the traces of a documentarian's touch (such as its cassavetes-esque sense of improvisation) get the film off to a good start.
it begins by introducing a series of strange, troubled and decidedly un-hollywood suburban inhabitants... an abusive, jealous boyfriend who attacks the ogglers of his go-go dancing girlfriend... a mentally ill woman who spends her days hitch-hiking and assaulting the drivers who accept her with rude and inappropriate questions... an obese, elderly widower who decides to celebrate his wedding anniversary by replacing his dead wife with his (strangely consenting) house servant... and the list goes on. the camera begins by simply following them around, blurring "fact and fiction," and teetering on the threshold of exploitation in a manner similar to the films of harmony korine.
korine is possibly the first point of reference the film demands, but ultimately not the best. first, the look of it is much different-- more austere, occasionally "aesthetic" in a way i found too familiar. lots of quasi-modernist shots of garage doors and manicured lawns. a glossy take on the suburban uncanny with a fetish for the unflattering– as if hollywood darling american beauty were seen through the eyes of nan goldin. at forst, seidl goes all out with cinematic sensuality, and a half an hour into it, days feels like an atmospheric work, a document of an outsider's curiosity.
but eventually plots begin to emerge. here, i must confess to a certain artsy-fartsy plot-a-phobia on my part, being a big fan of directors to whom telling a story seems somewhat peripheral (abbas kiarostami, tsai ming-liang, etc.), but i assure you i'm not being superficial by saying that the narrative aspects of dog days are its eventual downfall. part of the problem is structural, and part is ideological...
structural: as paths begin to cross and dramas begin to unfold, it becomes clear that what seidl is making is an ensemble film. and despite its avant-garde flourishes, it encounters the same problems that most ensemble films run up against-- there's too much shit going on. this is what reduced all of paul thomas anderson's musings to the wretched, overrated soap-opera that magnolia was. this is what prevented wes anderson's the royal tenenbaums from being as brilliant as rushmore. too many characters, too many ideas, and nothing rich or pervasive enough to hold them all together. and in days the tone is so exhaustingly dark and brutal that in areas I felt robbed of the complexity the content demanded. put simply, by film's end i'd decided which stories were interesting and which weren't, and suffering through the lesser ones became increasingly laborious.
ideological: as the plots develop, seidl slowly abandons the sensuality that is the film’s most promising element. curiosity is sacrificed to pedagogy, and despite an immensely effective and convincing cast, the characters are reduced to melancholic specimens in the skinnerbox of seidl’s misanthropy. by the time the inevitable “character-overlap” element hits the screen (specifically– where an overworked, stressed-out salesman picks up the mentally ill hitchiker), fatalistic realism passes over into sensationalism (it's strikingly similar in its pessimism and assumptions to the films of larry clark). this pill is particularly hard to swallow because everything is rendered with punishing brutality. one expects a film of this kind to amount to something of real relevance. in the end, it feels like another entry into the growing genre of glamorized fatalism, where an audience is rewarded for its stamina and endurance rather than its sensitivity.
that said, the performaces and the lengths to which seidl is willing to subject the performers (for better or worse) do lend the film a decent dose of integrity (a.k.a. why I bothered with the post). if you can stomach it, it’s worth a look. also, to contradict myself a bit, the film’s most disturbing narrative (following a masochistic woman, her lover and a conflicted, sadistic sex partner) is–-oddly-- by far the most engaging. seidl’s uncompromising plunge into the layers of master/slave sexuality has real merit to it. and briefly, he weaves together a powerful mix of improv, pathos and insight. had the film focused more extensively on that one lineage–awful as it was to watch– I’d find it of far greater relevance. as is, i found it pretty disappointing.
it begins by introducing a series of strange, troubled and decidedly un-hollywood suburban inhabitants... an abusive, jealous boyfriend who attacks the ogglers of his go-go dancing girlfriend... a mentally ill woman who spends her days hitch-hiking and assaulting the drivers who accept her with rude and inappropriate questions... an obese, elderly widower who decides to celebrate his wedding anniversary by replacing his dead wife with his (strangely consenting) house servant... and the list goes on. the camera begins by simply following them around, blurring "fact and fiction," and teetering on the threshold of exploitation in a manner similar to the films of harmony korine.
korine is possibly the first point of reference the film demands, but ultimately not the best. first, the look of it is much different-- more austere, occasionally "aesthetic" in a way i found too familiar. lots of quasi-modernist shots of garage doors and manicured lawns. a glossy take on the suburban uncanny with a fetish for the unflattering– as if hollywood darling american beauty were seen through the eyes of nan goldin. at forst, seidl goes all out with cinematic sensuality, and a half an hour into it, days feels like an atmospheric work, a document of an outsider's curiosity.
but eventually plots begin to emerge. here, i must confess to a certain artsy-fartsy plot-a-phobia on my part, being a big fan of directors to whom telling a story seems somewhat peripheral (abbas kiarostami, tsai ming-liang, etc.), but i assure you i'm not being superficial by saying that the narrative aspects of dog days are its eventual downfall. part of the problem is structural, and part is ideological...
structural: as paths begin to cross and dramas begin to unfold, it becomes clear that what seidl is making is an ensemble film. and despite its avant-garde flourishes, it encounters the same problems that most ensemble films run up against-- there's too much shit going on. this is what reduced all of paul thomas anderson's musings to the wretched, overrated soap-opera that magnolia was. this is what prevented wes anderson's the royal tenenbaums from being as brilliant as rushmore. too many characters, too many ideas, and nothing rich or pervasive enough to hold them all together. and in days the tone is so exhaustingly dark and brutal that in areas I felt robbed of the complexity the content demanded. put simply, by film's end i'd decided which stories were interesting and which weren't, and suffering through the lesser ones became increasingly laborious.
ideological: as the plots develop, seidl slowly abandons the sensuality that is the film’s most promising element. curiosity is sacrificed to pedagogy, and despite an immensely effective and convincing cast, the characters are reduced to melancholic specimens in the skinnerbox of seidl’s misanthropy. by the time the inevitable “character-overlap” element hits the screen (specifically– where an overworked, stressed-out salesman picks up the mentally ill hitchiker), fatalistic realism passes over into sensationalism (it's strikingly similar in its pessimism and assumptions to the films of larry clark). this pill is particularly hard to swallow because everything is rendered with punishing brutality. one expects a film of this kind to amount to something of real relevance. in the end, it feels like another entry into the growing genre of glamorized fatalism, where an audience is rewarded for its stamina and endurance rather than its sensitivity.
that said, the performaces and the lengths to which seidl is willing to subject the performers (for better or worse) do lend the film a decent dose of integrity (a.k.a. why I bothered with the post). if you can stomach it, it’s worth a look. also, to contradict myself a bit, the film’s most disturbing narrative (following a masochistic woman, her lover and a conflicted, sadistic sex partner) is–-oddly-- by far the most engaging. seidl’s uncompromising plunge into the layers of master/slave sexuality has real merit to it. and briefly, he weaves together a powerful mix of improv, pathos and insight. had the film focused more extensively on that one lineage–awful as it was to watch– I’d find it of far greater relevance. as is, i found it pretty disappointing.
