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Paul Schrader’s ‘The Canyons’: A Film Review
“The Canyons” isn’t exactly a good movie. In fact, at times it’s laughably bad. But it’s never uninteresting. There’s something tragic and wasted about it, like a baby born with all of its limbs broken. The sex scenes are lit to resemble an old bruise, while the digital sunlight renders the cast a translucent shade of autopsy-gray.
Maybe that’s why I found it so striking.
The story is a dull rehash of a “Melrose Place” episode: young people cheat on each other, then text about it until someone dies. It’s a joyless, airless, pantless film that would feel right at home on late-night cable. Bret Easton Ellis’s dialog is probably the weakest thing about it. Everyone sounds like an idiotic douchebag the second they open their mouths. The script is barely functional enough to keep the picture creeping towards an anticlimax.
What matters here is the funereal mood, the vibe of moral decay and inner blight that director Paul Schrader has specialized in for almost 40 years. Unfortunately, this time it’s difficult to tell how much he actually cares. Schrader used to turn icy dispassion into vibrant art. Here he seems rather bored by it. “The Canyons” is sorta like a brand new carpet. It’s visually bold, factory fresh and ultra-clean, but emits a toxic ‘off-gas’ smell if you get too close.
I don’t really know what to make of porn star James Deen’s mainstream feature debut. He seems cold and a little bit lost, like a sexy, high-tech mannequin who wandered away from an Abercrombie display window. My advice would be for him to lighten up, grow some pubes and choose roles that require a pulse, not just a schlong.
As for Lindsay Lohan, I felt somewhat bad for her whenever she was on screen. Puffy and sloe-eyed, with a raspy voice that sounds like the Devil in “The Exorcist,” she’s not well served by her director, the movie or the high-waist control panties she’s costumed in most of the time. This probably isn’t going to be the career comeback she’s looking for. And yet there are times when, seemingly out of nowhere, she comes scarily to life, inhabiting her troubled character to such a powerful degree that you can easily see what made her a star in the first place. These fleeting moments add an unexpected degree of poignancy to the moribund action.
So, considering all that’s wrong with it, why didn’t I hate “The Canyons”? Probably because, in spite of everything, it’s not obnoxious. It’s not loud or ugly. In fact, it’s almost thoughtful at times. This is a film at war with itself. Much of it seems weirdly artificial, yet every so often it feels painfully human. At the screening I attended, Schrader’s post-film Q&A helped win me over. He’s so playfully grumpy and knowingly naughty. After hearing him speak, I couldn’t wait to see it again.
I’ve watched this gloomy ode to texting & humping twice since then, and my appreciation for it has deepened enough for me to call it essential viewing.
Stuart Gordon’s ‘Taste’: A Theater Review
Before you sit down to enjoy Stuart Gordon’s new play “Taste,” be warned: a half-dozen people walked out halfway through the preview I attended, and a man in the audience suffered a full-on seizure a few minutes later.
Written by Benjamin Brand and directed by Gordon, this is a profoundly disturbing production, the kind that sticks with you long after the actors have taken their final bows. When I first heard that it was a play about cannibalism, I figured it would be another wink-wink black comedy filled with macabre jokes about dinner etiquette.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Inspired by an infamous true story, “Taste” is a serious examination of the twisted relationship that develops between two deeply disturbed individuals. While there are a handful of darkly humorous moments scattered throughout, the overwhelming theme of the play is loneliness and the desire for intimacy at all costs. And I mean ALL costs.
This is heavy stuff, perhaps too bleak and upsetting for general audiences. But for those willing to peek into the abyss, it’s a sight to behold.
Structured as a first (and last) date between two strangers who’ve met online, the play takes place in real time, over the course of a single evening, in a real kitchen, with actual food cooked and eaten on stage. The smell of sautéing meat and onions wafts through the theater, adding an extra layer of sensory stimulation to the performance. In fact, the set, lighting and subtly realistic sound design all help to create an intense naturalism that pays off big time once the physical horror begins. There’s nothing stylized or amusingly artificial about this play, nothing safe to hide behind. It succeeds at luring you in and then clobbering you.
The two actors deserve an enormous amount of credit. Donal Thoms-Cappello as Terry, the psychotic chef, takes what could easily have been a campy villainous role and dials it back just enough to show us a real person lurking beneath the mask. He’s alternately frightening and pathetic.
Chris L. McKenna as Vic, the main course, is quite simply amazing. There’s a deep well of sadness inside this character, a desperate longing to connect with another person, even if it means complete annihilation. McKenna brings all of that hopelessness and despair to the surface from the moment he steps on stage. He’s utterly heartbreaking. You’ve seen people like him in real life, damaged folks who just can’t seem to relate to the rest of the world. That tragic familiarity makes it doubly difficult to watch what happens to him over the course of the story.
Blood is spilled in this play. Some of the imagery is extremely shocking and sexual in nature. Seriously, this play does not pull its punches. The lights don’t fade down just as it’s about to get brutal. We see it all – including a graphic castration and penis eating sequence – and there’s nothing coy about it. But it’s the theme of the piece that’s most disturbing. It’s the emotional darkness that you’ll be discussing afterward. Grim doesn’t begin to describe it.
“Taste” is brilliant stuff and I’m glad I saw it, as hard as it was to sit through.
Matthew Chernov 