Twentynine Palms (2004, Bruno Dumont) (v) 57

I'm sorry, but the corner of Eros Street and Thanatos Boulevard is getting to be a real tired place to visit in my opinion, especially when the Thanatos seems to be taken for granted. Irréversible is the most obvious referent, but Noe's film creates a universe (quite literally, come to think about it) that provides a context (right or wrong) for its violence; for Dumont, there's no need for context, no need to examine, just a simple declaration that humans are animals who fuck and kill. Frankly, that's stupid. (You'd think a former philosophy professor would feel the need to prod and examine rather than declare, but here we are.) Not that there's anything inherently wrong with the idea of a loving, destructive couple; but if you're looking for insight, then listen to The Mountain Goat's Tallahassee album.

Yet, until we get to Dumont's foregone conclusion, it's not a bad entry into the "rigorous" mise-en-scene sweepstakes. I'm fond of movies that are shot in America but are directed by non-residents (Zabriskie Point comes to mind for lots of reasons); seeing something familiar (in this case -- the deserts of Southern California -- very familiar) through another's eyes is always refreshing. There's a quick shot of the highway twisting its off-ramps into the desert that's quite beautiful, and I liked the close-up of the texture of the Joshua tree.

Still, I can't help but feel that Dumont blows it with the two "gotcha!" moments at the end, revealing a fundamental dishonesty in his approach. Both moments are, cinematically speaking, excellent; I jumped both times. But both are very much horror conventions, and I'm having trouble reconciling them with the hands-off, just-observing technique of the previous ninety minutes. If it's so important to simply to show a story that's simply happening, to "allow the viewer to think" (to paraphrase from the interview on the DVD) why resort to such manipulative tactics? Why not show these two moments from a cold long-shot? Or was everything up until this point just another way of manipulating the audience?