Movie Review: Twixt
(Note: This got a bit longer than normal and I don't feel like cutting my analysis down; consider this me getting the writing engine started again.)
When you explore the greater world of cinema, certain directors stand out among their peers. You hear that Spielberg or Scorsese or Whedon are making a movie, and you generally know you’re going to get something of a certain quality or with certain attributes. The Spielberg movie will be a blockbuster with an epic arc, sweeping camera shots, and special use of lighting. The Scorsese file will usually be gritty or dark, with wonderful character interactions and a focus on the actors’ craft. The Whedon film… will sound like every conversation you had in college and will be snarky enough to level a sea of goths where they stand. Also Fox will cancel it… whether it’s their production or not. All the greats fall into this special category: Sodenberg, Kubrick, Ford, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Felini, Godard…. and Francis Ford Coppola.
Coppola has directed some of the most powerful and gut-wrenching masterpieces of the silver screen. If you’re in any way serious about film, you can’t escape the importance of pieces like the Godfather movies or Apocalypse Now. Even Dracula is a hauntingly beautiful and stylized film, despite a strange script and some odd casting choices. These are iconic movies that everyone should see at least once to understand what Coppola is capable of when given a grand enough canvass. The main problem with Coppola is he’s inconsistent in his greatness. One minute he’s making Brando the most intimidating man alive, and the next he’s making… Jack.
Recently Coppola has been experimenting with his style independently, not tied to any of the major studios, a move meant to grant him more creative freedom at the expense of having a big budget. In 2011 he created the movie Twixt, a “gothic horror thriller” about a writer using the mystery of a small town murder as the basis of his newest book. With a relatively small budget of about $7 million, it was meant to be an experiment in “real-time editing”, with Coppola personally overseeing every showing and altering the length, order, and inclusion of certain scenes based on how the audience was reacting. This, of course, is impractical for any kind of distribution and Coppola ended up making a final cut of his film based on all the footage he had. This thing is up on Netflix at the time of this writing and, as far as I can tell, never got much screen time.
Which is probably for the best, really. This thing is AWFUL.
This is how I looked through most of this movie, too...
Plot Synopsis: Hall Baltimore (Val Kilmer) arrives in the small town of Swann Valley for a live book signing session. He only gets one visit, from the local sheriff (Bruce Dern), who takes him to the office to see the body of a young girl he believes was murdered by crew of “Satanists” on the other side of the lake. Baltimore, in dire need of money and broken by the death of his daughter, decides to team up with the sheriff to explore this murder and the history of the town as a vehicle for his next book. As he begins writing, he becomes lost in a fever dream where he is haunted by the murdered girl as well as Edgar Allen Poe as he tried to uncover both the events of the murder and of his new book.
This movie can be best described as Coppola’s attempt to be David Lynch, and he does not fare well. I think Coppola was trying to go for a theme of “artistic auto-cannibalism” here; that is to say, the movie is supposed to represent how the writer loses his mind and soul to the craft of writing. You can see elements of it here and there: the re-writing of the story in medias res, the sudden splashes of insight that move the story along, the pockets of bombast, all of it meant to give a visual representation of a writer losing himself in his craft. While that’s an honorable and lofty enough goal for a project, the execution here is atrocious. As soon as our protagonist begins writing, about fifteen minutes into the film, the entire thing falls apart into an incoherent mess. We get a series of scenes barely stapled together that often have nothing to do with one another, likely a side effect of Coppola trying to cram together all his disparate footage meant for the “live editing” sessions. We hop from scene to scene with little to no warning, often leaving the poor narrative by the side of the road like an unattractive hitchhiker no one wants to pick up. We also get two endings, in quick succession, neither of which makes any sense, if you've made it all the way to the end, you will be baffled. I've watched it twice now and STILL don’t get it… and that’s a huge problem. Being artsy only gets you so far; if no one can follow your narrative, you have already lost the war.
On top of that, the special effects are laughably bad. Again, I can see what Coppola was aiming for: surreal backgrounds, hazy outlines, unnatural color saturation, all meant to make the scenes more like a waking nightmare. The problem is that the effects used are so poorly done that they’re distracting, like being unable to appreciate a sunset because your leg is being humped by a mad Teletubby. The day-for-night shots are as plentiful as they are painful, only outdone by the obvious green screening used throughout the film, often completely unnecessarily. In the same scene we will go from an on-site shot of the actors to an actor standing in front of a green screen OF THE SAME PLACE despite the fact that no one has moved. Were the actors phasing in and out of reality during filming? Has Val Kilmer gotten big enough that he’s warping light and space around him?
If you can get a good chunk of the way through the movie, however, you’ll be treated to a sequence so poorly done it almost wraps around to being high art. I won’t spoil it for anyone, but if you don’t find yourself wishing Jim Steinman had done part of the score a scene or two after meeting the “Satantists” I’ll be sorely disappointed.
OH HONEY....
I’m not sure I can even adequately comment on the performances by our cast in this one, as the black hole of the narrative pretty much swallows anything these actors may be doing; it would take a truly bizarre performance to break that gravitational pull, and Nic Cage is sadly not in this. Val Kilmer is adequate, I guess, but the overall abnormality of the film and the ridiculousness of the script obfuscates anything he may be trying to accomplish. He’s been given a walking cliché of a character to play, the struggling writer with the tragic past and the alcohol problem and the nagging wife (oddly enough, played by Kilmer’s actual ex-wife), then thrown into a melting pot with other clichés and told to make it work. Everyone is pretty much just along for the ride. The one thing that stands out is the narration at the start, brought to us by the gravel voice of Tom Waits… and that stands out mostly because it opens the film, before the true problems with the film have even had a chance to surface.
And yes, that’s Father Guido Sarducci in that one scene; I checked.
This is not a good movie; it’s not even aggressively bad, it’s just incoherent. The effects are almost laughably bad and the narrative is an inchoate blob of clichés and themes that never pulls itself together enough to make sense. Maybe this worked better during Coppola’s live sessions, but the final product is jarringly bad. If you want to see how experimental film making can go absolutely wrong, this may be worth a viewing, preferably with a group of people; otherwise I’d avoid it.
When you explore the greater world of cinema, certain directors stand out among their peers. You hear that Spielberg or Scorsese or Whedon are making a movie, and you generally know you’re going to get something of a certain quality or with certain attributes. The Spielberg movie will be a blockbuster with an epic arc, sweeping camera shots, and special use of lighting. The Scorsese file will usually be gritty or dark, with wonderful character interactions and a focus on the actors’ craft. The Whedon film… will sound like every conversation you had in college and will be snarky enough to level a sea of goths where they stand. Also Fox will cancel it… whether it’s their production or not. All the greats fall into this special category: Sodenberg, Kubrick, Ford, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Felini, Godard…. and Francis Ford Coppola.
Coppola has directed some of the most powerful and gut-wrenching masterpieces of the silver screen. If you’re in any way serious about film, you can’t escape the importance of pieces like the Godfather movies or Apocalypse Now. Even Dracula is a hauntingly beautiful and stylized film, despite a strange script and some odd casting choices. These are iconic movies that everyone should see at least once to understand what Coppola is capable of when given a grand enough canvass. The main problem with Coppola is he’s inconsistent in his greatness. One minute he’s making Brando the most intimidating man alive, and the next he’s making… Jack.
Recently Coppola has been experimenting with his style independently, not tied to any of the major studios, a move meant to grant him more creative freedom at the expense of having a big budget. In 2011 he created the movie Twixt, a “gothic horror thriller” about a writer using the mystery of a small town murder as the basis of his newest book. With a relatively small budget of about $7 million, it was meant to be an experiment in “real-time editing”, with Coppola personally overseeing every showing and altering the length, order, and inclusion of certain scenes based on how the audience was reacting. This, of course, is impractical for any kind of distribution and Coppola ended up making a final cut of his film based on all the footage he had. This thing is up on Netflix at the time of this writing and, as far as I can tell, never got much screen time.
Which is probably for the best, really. This thing is AWFUL.
This is how I looked through most of this movie, too...
Plot Synopsis: Hall Baltimore (Val Kilmer) arrives in the small town of Swann Valley for a live book signing session. He only gets one visit, from the local sheriff (Bruce Dern), who takes him to the office to see the body of a young girl he believes was murdered by crew of “Satanists” on the other side of the lake. Baltimore, in dire need of money and broken by the death of his daughter, decides to team up with the sheriff to explore this murder and the history of the town as a vehicle for his next book. As he begins writing, he becomes lost in a fever dream where he is haunted by the murdered girl as well as Edgar Allen Poe as he tried to uncover both the events of the murder and of his new book.
This movie can be best described as Coppola’s attempt to be David Lynch, and he does not fare well. I think Coppola was trying to go for a theme of “artistic auto-cannibalism” here; that is to say, the movie is supposed to represent how the writer loses his mind and soul to the craft of writing. You can see elements of it here and there: the re-writing of the story in medias res, the sudden splashes of insight that move the story along, the pockets of bombast, all of it meant to give a visual representation of a writer losing himself in his craft. While that’s an honorable and lofty enough goal for a project, the execution here is atrocious. As soon as our protagonist begins writing, about fifteen minutes into the film, the entire thing falls apart into an incoherent mess. We get a series of scenes barely stapled together that often have nothing to do with one another, likely a side effect of Coppola trying to cram together all his disparate footage meant for the “live editing” sessions. We hop from scene to scene with little to no warning, often leaving the poor narrative by the side of the road like an unattractive hitchhiker no one wants to pick up. We also get two endings, in quick succession, neither of which makes any sense, if you've made it all the way to the end, you will be baffled. I've watched it twice now and STILL don’t get it… and that’s a huge problem. Being artsy only gets you so far; if no one can follow your narrative, you have already lost the war.
On top of that, the special effects are laughably bad. Again, I can see what Coppola was aiming for: surreal backgrounds, hazy outlines, unnatural color saturation, all meant to make the scenes more like a waking nightmare. The problem is that the effects used are so poorly done that they’re distracting, like being unable to appreciate a sunset because your leg is being humped by a mad Teletubby. The day-for-night shots are as plentiful as they are painful, only outdone by the obvious green screening used throughout the film, often completely unnecessarily. In the same scene we will go from an on-site shot of the actors to an actor standing in front of a green screen OF THE SAME PLACE despite the fact that no one has moved. Were the actors phasing in and out of reality during filming? Has Val Kilmer gotten big enough that he’s warping light and space around him?
If you can get a good chunk of the way through the movie, however, you’ll be treated to a sequence so poorly done it almost wraps around to being high art. I won’t spoil it for anyone, but if you don’t find yourself wishing Jim Steinman had done part of the score a scene or two after meeting the “Satantists” I’ll be sorely disappointed.
OH HONEY....
I’m not sure I can even adequately comment on the performances by our cast in this one, as the black hole of the narrative pretty much swallows anything these actors may be doing; it would take a truly bizarre performance to break that gravitational pull, and Nic Cage is sadly not in this. Val Kilmer is adequate, I guess, but the overall abnormality of the film and the ridiculousness of the script obfuscates anything he may be trying to accomplish. He’s been given a walking cliché of a character to play, the struggling writer with the tragic past and the alcohol problem and the nagging wife (oddly enough, played by Kilmer’s actual ex-wife), then thrown into a melting pot with other clichés and told to make it work. Everyone is pretty much just along for the ride. The one thing that stands out is the narration at the start, brought to us by the gravel voice of Tom Waits… and that stands out mostly because it opens the film, before the true problems with the film have even had a chance to surface.
And yes, that’s Father Guido Sarducci in that one scene; I checked.
This is not a good movie; it’s not even aggressively bad, it’s just incoherent. The effects are almost laughably bad and the narrative is an inchoate blob of clichés and themes that never pulls itself together enough to make sense. Maybe this worked better during Coppola’s live sessions, but the final product is jarringly bad. If you want to see how experimental film making can go absolutely wrong, this may be worth a viewing, preferably with a group of people; otherwise I’d avoid it.