In our year-end coverage of 2009, we failed to mention one film that provoked some of the lengthiest conversation among our writers—THE BOX, Richard Kelly’s first studio feature. While several of us at Cine-File championed Kelly’s last film, SOUTHLAND TALES (2007-8), his latest did not elicit so much as a blurb here during its brief Chicago run. It did, however, provoke an extended email exchange between myself and fellow contributor Mike King, which touched on everything from Kelly’s contentious filmography to our own place in U.S. pop culture. Below is an edited version of our exchange. – Ben Sachs

*****

Ben,
Just walked out of Mr. Kelly’s latest and I have to know what you think…. Are you still on board with this guy?

For my money, I’d say THE BOX elaborates on all of Kelly’s worst impulses while exhibiting little of the heady, if misguided, ambition that made SOUTHLAND TALES at least an interesting failure. The new one is only fascinating in that he seems to be shooting for popular cinema yet misses the mark so widely, and that Warner Brothers actually gave it a theatrical release instead of sending it straight to DVD. There is, however, idle entertainment to be found in some ominous shots of a Steenbeck and the ebbs of Cameron Diaz’s fake southern accent…

Let me know what you think,
– Mike

Mike,
I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you by saying I enjoyed THE BOX a whole lot. I won’t defend it as a warped reflection of American culture a la SOUTHLAND TALES—though the third-act revelation that its American characters have been doomed by their lack of altruism had a certain resonance after a week of masochistically following the Copenhagen talks and what seems like their inevitable railroading by corporate interests. I wouldn’t call the movie profound, either—but then, I’ve always found Kelly’s metaphysics risible and his sense of sympathy as adolescent as it is sincere. (Still, I’ve got to admire Kelly’s audacity of interpreting No Exit as a predecessor to The Twilight Zone, a conflation of high and low culture as brazenly weird as anything in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS.) I can only be honest with my immediate response to the film: I was entertained.

I don’t want to use that term pejoratively; the movie entertained me more than most others this year. I should note that I saw THE BOX with a couple of my bandmates, comic book fanatics who have taught me to appreciate the work of contemporary comics writers. I doubt I’d appreciate Kelly’s movies as much as I do if it weren’t for their influence: I think no other filmmaker is more aligned with the tone, imagination, and overall moral grounding of recent comics than he is; and I think the disconnect many of Kelly’s detractors feel from his work has something to do with an unfamiliarity with writers like Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis, and Brian K. Vaughn.

There’s a key difference between these writers—who continue to write for mainstream superhero series even after writing more experimental fare—and someone like Alan Moore, a self-conscious postmodernist who uses comic conventions, in part, to critique them. There is no overt sense of critique in Morrison, Ellis, and Vaughn, who began writing in the wake of Moore’s success. Their work seems to exist in a middle territory interested neither in perpetuating old myths nor tearing them down. They seem to genuinely love comics and want to leave their fantasies intact. Their process of revision is in acknowledging the ways comics interact with the individual imaginations of those who read them: The cultural fantasies are expanded by commingling with more personal fantasies or, in many cases, full-blown leaps into the surreal. (A high-point for this sort of thing: Morrison’s indescribable, Burroughs-esque The F.I.L.T.H.) In letting so much personal observation into comics, these writers often graze the reality of contemporary politics, yet it would be a mistake to think of their work as allegory. The ventures into real life serve mainly to expand the territory of the fantasy.

I think this is where the problems begin in serious discussions of Kelly. No matter how personal they get, they are not about real life. As in the comics authors I keep mentioning, the authorial stamp is in the imagination with which the tales are spun out. I admit that it was tough for me to appreciate this kind of authorship. It seemed to deny morality, verisimilitude, or anything we associate with grown-up art. But I came to make my peace with modern comics anyway. Presuming they aren’t boring or far-right in their implications (and I can’t get into Frank Miller for both of these reasons), I’ve learned to loosen up and appreciate the details.

And I’m consistently satisfied with Kelly’s details, no less in THE BOX than either of his other movies: The canny imitation of early-Spielberg cinematography in the name of something far weirder than anything Spielberg’s ever imagined; the fetishization of 70s NASA technology; the dashes of odd humor (as in the scene where James Marsden’s put on the hot seat at the wedding rehearsal and then fumbles his way out of it); the old B-movie pleasure of seeing normal-looking actors play out the dignity of small men and women; the Bunuelian detail of a middle-class Virginia audience attending a production of No Exit at the local opera house (!); the smooth tracking shots (always the ace up Kelly’s sleeve) that can turn any scene into a waking dream. Then there’s the shot of Cameron Diaz espied through a window, “Bell Bottom Blues” overwhelming the soundtrack, dancing comfortably for the first time since receiving a prosthetic foot—such a prosaic image of a man’s happiness, but all the more touching for it.

I’m impressed that Kelly threw so many narrative curveballs into a major studio feature—if for no other reason than to keep things interesting. But flitting around the absurdities is a rather personal response to a universal question: What is the foundation of a moral life? It’s an abstract question, brought into focus by the abstract nature of Kelly’s prodigious imagination.

Stay in touch,
– Ben

Ben,
I’m happy to hear you got so much out of THE BOX, though I still can’t say I’m on board. Comics—new or old, mainstream or not—are one of my many blind spots, so while I can’t appreciate Kelly (or anyone else) through that prism, I suspect you may be on to something there. I’m hardly interested in convincing you not to like something you clearly dug, so I’ll stick to a few observations:

An appreciative catalogue of minor details is a common feature of the positive notices of THE BOX that I’ve encountered. That’s all well and good, but what surprises me is they all seem to ignore great swaths of the movie: the central gamble, the sub-BODY SNATCHERS hoo-ha that follows in its wake, and the sister’s wedding—all of which are afforded far more screen time. You take the middle-class couple attending No Exit as a Bunuelian touch. Maybe, but would you say the same for the husband (who we’re told can barely make ends meet) tooling around in a Corvette or the wife acting like a total stranger at her sister’s wedding? Sure, I’m nitpicking, but I wonder if you aren’t cherry-picking. For me, the haphazard accumulation of inconsistencies looks less like Bunuel than something not-so-hot. But as with SOUTHLAND TALES, what surprises me most about THE BOX might be the nature of my own negative reaction. Normally, I wouldn’t be caught dead complaining about contradictions or irrelevant digressions—hell, those are attributes I cherish in the films of Guy Maddin—but for some reason, I couldn’t get into this at all.

Much of this has to do with all the footnotes that emerge once Cameron Diaz pushes the button. A million bucks and a lifetime of guilt (the agreed-upon consequence) suddenly turns into zombies, nosebleeds, and a deaf/blind son. I suppose one could argue it’s a critique of how powerful entities (banks, countries, whatever) fuck people around, rewriting the rules long after the dotted line’s been signed; perhaps it’s a prime example of the “authorial stamp” in the comics you described. But couldn’t it also be sloppy writing?

Funny you should mention Kelly in the context of comic-style escapist entertainment (which I don’t think he necessarily considers his films). The closest I’ve gotten to that kind of stuff is the TV show Lost, which I assume you wouldn’t place on par with the authors you mentioned (nor would I try to convince you it is). Nevertheless, it has been good preparation for Kelly’s recent work in that it’s been an incredibly frustrating narrative experience: Here is another sci-fi mystery that takes its ability to address Big Questions far too seriously, unveils man after man behind the curtain, and delves into character details that seem Significant but never add up to much. With Lost, the disconnects are often rooted in external factors: A character will get killed because the actor playing her got a DUI, and suddenly all that time we’ve spent pondering her significance becomes irrelevant. Kelly’s last two have similar symptoms, but it’s his own Big Questions that get away from him rather than his characters. In fact, when an editor did get between him and his vision on DONNIE DARKO, I’d say it resulted in a far better film. I suspect the same editor could’ve carved something better and more enigmatic out of THE BOX.
– Mike

Dear Mike,
I don’t know how seriously Kelly takes his own ponderings. (This would be a good question to ask him, if we ever get the chance!) A lot in his movies suggests that he doesn’t—the silly musical numbers in his first two films, for instance—and I find his work more enjoyable when I follow that hunch.

I haven’t seen a minute of Lost; but then, I haven’t seen any of the ambitious series that are supposed to convert old-school cinephiles like us to television. I often get the sense I’m sitting out on a big part of The Culture; at the same time, the 30-odd hours I’d spend catching up with The Wire could also afford 10 Frederick Wiseman films (or nearly 100 Hal Roach shorts, for that matter). I guess I just like my high culture high and my low culture low. When it comes to popular literature (an increasingly tenuous concept in our dark age of Jodi Picoult), I’d sooner consult the latest Vertigo Comics slate than the New York Times bestseller list; and when it comes to TV, I’m more interested in Adult Swim than HBO. I think I’ve developed this persuasion through my tenure in subcultures born around art cinema and underground rock. And since I find these cultures so valuable and life-affirming, I’ve tried, off and on, to exchange with other subcultures similar to my own. I don’t think I’ll ever find common ground with the gaming community, but I’m fascinated by comic book collectors, hip-hop DJs, and social service advocates. I think we’ve got a lot in common.

Kelly seems interested in uniting different subcultures, too—namely, sci-fi nerds and the cine-poetry descendants of Max Ophuls. The results shouldn’t work—and for a lot of people, they plainly don’t—but I’m consistently disarmed by the attempt. Much more than, say, Christopher Nolan’s (who strikes me as wanting to please too many people at once) or Sam Raimi’s (a more winning director, but so in love with low culture as to occasionally come off as loutish).

I agree with your sentiments about Kelly’s storytelling. He’s like a child in that he gets so wrapped up in his own imagination that he loses sight of how to bring his ideas together. I often felt watching THE BOX that he wrote the entire thing in one or two sittings, then refused to amend it because that would tarnish the spirit that allowed him to write it at all. No, this isn’t a model of “good” writing, but I find the results far more entertaining than the typical Hollywood sci-fi or suspense that Kelly was expected to deliver. (Incidentally, SYMPATHY FOR MR VENGEANCE was written by Park Chanwook and his team over a whirlwind two or three days, and that may explain why it’s my favorite of Park’s films.) It’s not a question of quality so much as a difference in kind: Where the logical inconsistencies of a BOURNE movie (or SYRIANA, which strikes me as its fatuous, Big Question-asking equivalent) seem the result of wanting to seem mature while obliging the staples of the action genre, Kelly’s inconsistencies seem like the by-product of an id running on all cylinders. So, while the BODY SNATCHERS business seems to come out of nowhere and lead nowhere, it does allow for some remarkable set pieces: the De Palma-esque use of the Virginia State Library, Frank Langella’s late admission of his own vulnerability (a tricky scene that this great actor pulls off with touching integrity), and, best of all, the motel pool turned into an alien teleportal. Ignatius [Vishnevetsky, another Cine-File contributor] singled out this image as the essence of Kelly’s imagination—something so mundane becoming the locus of all sorts of weird premises.

I find all this encouraging. Even when talented postmodernists like De Palma, the Coen Brothers, and Guy Maddin (who I’m not all that crazy about, sorry) are at their best, I get a feeling that their work is always in response to other images—images whose influence on the culture is so pervasive that a new artist’s only obligation is to recombine them in interesting ways. Kelly, for better or for worse, is taking inspiration from other fantasies to spin off into his own.
– Ben

Ben,
What’s curious about Kelly is that even as his films have become bogged down with rabbit-hole exposition, they remain incomprehensible. The supernatural goings-on in THE BOX are no clearer to me than in DONNIE DARKO, despite the fact that Kelly devotes significantly more screen time to explaining them. I’m not sure if the confusion is intentional or not—as you say, THE BOX feels as if written in one night (though I’m not sure whether his id is running on all cylinders; that phrase is tailor-made for Guy Maddin)—but it is consistent with SOUTHLAND TALES, though in that film the ADD storytelling seems more germane. At any rate, I’ve got no problem with publishing first drafts: My beef is with all the exposition. You brought up the BOURNE films in a different context, but what I like about them is their inversion of the action movie formula. There’s almost no exposition until the end, when it is most irrelevant. I didn’t go for THE BOX’s big set pieces like you did, because even they were intruded upon by characters’ attempt to provide context for them. It’s remarkable that Kelly can have so much exposition and not really explain anything, but I still find it a drag to endure.

For me, the crucial break in Kelly’s work occurred when he made the supernatural elements of his films diegetic, which coincided with a shift from eerily anticipating national anxieties to trying to address them directly. The ambiguity of DONNIE DARKO seems to have granted him more confidence to let the odd moments (like those you catalogued in THE BOX) speak for themselves and not require an explanation. But if nothing else, you and other critics have convinced me that Kelly is a filmmaker who routinely inspires smart writing from smart people, which is more than I can say about most directors.

If you’re thinking of taking the plunge into TV, I’d hardly recommend Lost. I mainly got into it because I felt a similar urge to check in with The Culture, and a curiosity about how non-comic TV works, not having ever watched any myself. To that end, it’s served its purpose admirably—something I can shoot the shit about with near strangers, like the local sports team. It’s also a lot of fun in a FLASH GORDON kind of way. I’m with you in that I’m more interested in Adult Swim than HBO. In fact, my favorite moment in any Kelly film—the SUV porn-commercial that occurs early in SOUTHLAND TALES—seems straight out of Tim and Eric, Awesome Show, Great Job!. Still, I think you’d be better off with the 100 Hal Roach shorts, since you seem like the type to actually do it.
– Mike