deadend.com (2002)

S. Wyeth Clarkson

Canada

120 min, color (Sony HD cam), English

The first film I saw at this year's Sundance and it was not an auspicious beginning. Decidedly pointless, or, even worse, having a point that is rather mundane and uninteresting, deadend.com is the product of first-time director Clarkson's unhealthy dependence on "spontaneous" story scripting driven by user suggestions on his website. (Hence the title, by the way.) Filmed for supposedly "real" look with a shaky and blurry camera, the film succeeds as a headache-inducing torture device much more than it does in conveying realism. It may not be worse than that other realist stinker that was the Blair Witch Project but then the standard really isn't too high with that one either.

Briefly, the story concerns three Canadian losers who take a trip across Canada from Halifax to British Columbia in order to commit suicide at the other end of their journey. I wish I could say that this somehow reminded me of the brilliant michiyuki (or suicide journey) from Chikamatsu's plays but it did not and the reason for that also explains the film very basic failure: I did not give a rat's ass about whether any of the characters lived or died. Actually I take this back. After the first 10 minutes I found myself hoping feverishly against hope that they would all die in some horrible accident before we have to suffer their entire trip.

An a long trip it is. A whole 2 hours worth of nonsense and annoying stupidity, relentlessly served with a decidedly non-FDA-approved doses of cursing and vulgarity. Yeah, maybe the stupid punks do talk like that (after all, they are stupid punks) but it just gets tiresome after the first couple of sentences. What's the point?

What's the point? (It bears asking several times.) There is none. Some people enjoyed the film just because it was starkly realistic and succeeded in portraying faithfully the lives of young kids for whom the future apparently has nothing much in store. I have to agree with part of that assessment. I do know several people like that and it seems that the movie was truthful to reality. But let me reiterate... What's the point? Why should I care to see this?

There is no cogent answer I believe. Clarkson maybe as truthful as Cops but that doesn't art make. Being "real" is easy. It takes no imagination and it does not require that you actually have anything to say. Is the film a critique about the deplorable state of Canadian (and, by extension, American) society that produces such hopeless kids despite the wealth and abundance that the West seems to wallow in these days? Maybe the director thought it was, but it was not.

It was not because what we saw weren't characters struggling and failing, but characters so unimaginative, so boring, and so pedestrian that they never really tried. Yeah, yeah, I know that Nicole had to push drugs from the tender age of 1, and that Adrian applied to five colleges and did not get in, and that Harold... who the hell knows what was wrong with him except that his two brain cells, the last survivors of years of doing hard drugs, forgot to connect the fact that someone actually cared for him.

So we really do not know why these three are bent on suicide. I mean, come on, there are worse things in life than not getting into college on the first try. (I have to say that this Adrian guy never did make it believable that he was going to off himself, maybe part of the plot and maybe not. Hard to tell.) Bottom line: a boring nerd teams up with a disgruntled drug addict and a unattractive girl for a road trip that unveils the unhappy world of people living on the fringes of society. They visit the girl's grandmother who plays poker, then the drug addict's drug addict brother and his girlfriend who wants to be a cross between a marine biologist and a convenience store clerk, then visit some punks' den where they discuss everything from holes in the head to having spaghetti for brains, then they run some errands for the girl's tragic brother-hero, who is taken to existential contemplation of the differences between spit and tap water, they steal a gun, rob a convenience store (sans marine biologist), the nerd dude almost whips his pecker out for a brief stint as a porn star, the girl gets raped in a motel by some unsavory character whom the three had just met, and finally everyone dresses up in stolen clothes to go to a shady bar where the drug-addict can get stabbed by a redneck to prove that he is "real". The nerd dude takes a strong dislike to flesh wounds and packs his bag, and the unattractive chick leaves the dying drug addict in a car to suffocate in the exhaust fumes (which should be pretty easy given how environmentally unfriendly the trucks are). Then she takes off to some factory either to jump off the chimney (my opinion), or to get a closeup shot just like that screaming chick in the Blair Witch Project did (my opinion), or to walk to the bright future of a life as an industrial worker (my opinion), or to illustrate the profound absence of point to the film (also my opinion).

Now that I think about it, the film was a thoughtful and poignant criticism of our industrial society that (1) produces the gas-guzzling eco-disasters that are the trucks, (2) builds factories close to scenic waterways to ruin it for everyone and pollute the water, (3) allows construction companies to bribe inspectors into approving buildings that begin falling apart soon after a few measly punks move in, (4) allows its citizens to engage in gun trade, (5) fails to produce taste for clothes or just about anything else, (6) promotes big boobs, (7) has rapists freely roaming about drinking, gasp, beer, (8) permits obviously dangerous goats to prance about attacking dogs, (9) fails to supervise its bridges properly so that kids jump from them into icy (and polluted) water, and (10) puts real ugly welcome signs that are unintentionally ironic: I mean do YOU want to be welcomed to beautiful B.C. if you are about to kill yourself? I thought not.

I actually felt queasy during the film and left without waiting for the Q&A with writer/director/grand inquisitor Clarkson. I attributed my near-vomit experience to the several espressos and Park City's high altitude. I now know better.

January 19, 2003