Maybe it’s not cool to admit this, but I think we’ve all subconsciously wished that the recent trend of mumblecore films would have a flamethrowing muscle car or two, just to shake things up. And for once, instead of an abrupt, unresolved goodbye to cut off a dissolving relationship, perhaps post-apocalyptic carnage can take its place. Come on, wouldn’t Nights and Weekends be more satisfying if it ends with Joe Swanberg taking a shotgun to his own chin and credits roll as Greta Gerwig escapes from a mushroom cloud on a badass dirt bike?
Okay, maybe not, but that’s the frame of mind Bellflower operates in (though not those specific actions). “I’m going to end up hurting you,” the girl said to the boy in the first half of the film, as a reason for why they shouldn’t start dating. “No, you won’t,” the boy assures her, ensuring via the laws of fiction that he is definitely going to get hurt. Of course, with that set-up, and in this genre of movies, “hurt” typically means “passive-aggressive resentment turning into a reluctant break-up.” It’s that in Bellflower, too, but with a little more leeway for genre film mayhem.
The premise is charming, using sci-fi pastiche to address mundane issues: Woodrow (Evan Glodell, who also wrote, directed, produced and built the custom vehicles and weapons in the film) and Aiden (Tyler Dawson) are two slacker types who don’t seem to have jobs but are living comfortably in the suburban fringe of the Los Angeles area, where they spend their free time—and we only ever see them in their free time—building a flamethrowing Mad Max-inspired car they call “Medusa.” When they’re not drinking themselves into bad decisions, that is. They fantasize that the world will soon plunge into the apocalypse, and with Medusa, they shall rule the wastelands. Then Woodrow falls hard for a girl (Jessie Wiseman) at a bar, and when things don’t go so well, as we know it to be the inevitable, their immediate circle of friends turn into their own personal relationship wasteland full of lies, anger, and betrayal. The question for Woodrow is, how is Medusa going to help him come out ahead here?
We never see a separate apocalyptic fantasy starring Woodrow and Aiden a la Sucker Punch; we just feel elements of that fantasy manifesting in various ways as Woodrow’s life makes a turn for the shitty. Think about the existence of Medusa for a second. It is literally a gamechanger for the movie, rather than just a MacGuffin or a quirky hobby for the main character. It changes the audience perception of what kind of movie this is, just from the fact that it’s there. If the apocalypse is a metaphor for the emotional breakdown, the idea of the Medusa starts out as a psychological anchor for Woodrow; but when he and Aiden actually build the damn thing, then it becomes a crossover object that serves a purpose both above and below the surface of the story. It’s the main reason why Medusa's presence never feels out of place despite the fact that Bellflower is a movie about a bunch of white suburban hipsters falling in love, not road warriors in Bartertown.
But this twenty-something artistic-type-populated romance movie does take its imageries from movies with harder, seedier subject matters. It has a purposefully ugly, grimy, washed-out look that becomes attractive the more you look at it in the same way Serrano’s Piss Christ is, shot using a custom-made optical gear for the camera that Glodell himself invented. Adding a jumbled chronology into the mix, the film’s visual movement leads to that muddling of the metaphorical and literal. The very thing that makes Glodell’s film distinct from the past decade’s DIY cinema circles; even as its first half revels in the same empty conversations and spur-of-the-moment activities that masquerade as uber-realism. In a way, the film's embrace of violent, self-destructive adolescent fantasy feels much more honest of a capture of this subculture’s psyche—not to mention much more satisfying to watch.
Bellflower is every bit as navel-gazing and thematically narcissistic, but attempts at something grander in storytelling than a mere pseudo-autobiographical snapshot of a largely unremarkable life, borrowing bits and pieces from pop culture and genre films to shape a definite end to a tale that, let’s face it, when portrayed realistically as the Swanbergs and Bujalskis aimed to do when they first burst into the scene, tend to end with lip-biting whimpers than third act bangs. Bellflower has a bang. It also has screeches, roars and booms. Watch as the Medusa spits fireballs and takes Woodrow out of the suburbs and into another genre.
"Bellflower" opens August 5, 2011 and is rated R. Drama, Romance. Written and directed by Evan Glodell. Starring Evan Glodell, Jessie Wiseman, Rebekah Brandes, Tyler Dawson.
