[WATCHED: March 15, 2012] The Wolf Knife
Ever since the advent of Wholphin, McSweeney’s short film DVD series, The Believer’s annual Film Issue has included films that do not belong on Wholphin–typically longer films, which is a cool way to see things you normally wouldn’t. This year’s issue includes a feature-length film by Laurel Nakadate, The Wolf Knife.
Readers of this blog know that I love the McSweeney’s empire. I read McSweeeney’s and The Believer, Grantland and Lucky Peach. They’ve gotten me to enjoy things I never thought I would. I also really love Wholphin–the films are weird and cool and unexpected.
So you can imagine how disappointed I was to be so disappointed by The Wolf Knife. The introduction to the film in the magazine is by Deb Olin Unferth. She made it sound amazing (even though she admits that people did walk out during the first fifteen minutes in some screenings). And yet, after going through what some critics have said she concludes: “to some [seeing the film] might sound like the best possible use of ninety minutes of their lives.”
Oh how wrong this was.
I don’t normally like to talk about things that I dislike. It’s not worth my time. And yet for this film, I put in 90 minutes and….well, let’s just say I was glad I had a copy of the Believer to read while I was watching it.
The premise and plot are fine. Even the acting is pretty good, at least for the two main characters–the supporting cast is, well, wooden and stiff and very unreal–but that may be on purpose, it’s hard to tell.
I can sum up the plot of the film in a few sentences–Two teenage girls, brought together by grief (the death of a parent years ago and not part of the film) go on a road trip. The trip is not what Crissy originally said it was going to be–they are not going to look for her father. When they finally arrive at her real destination–a potential suitor, she is freaked out by what really happens). It’s a good premise. But the problem is that a two sentence premise should not be made into a 90 minute film.
The first strike against it is not the filmmaker’s fault I don’t think. The film is shot on video in real settings–bedrooms and hotel rooms (filmed quickly and cheaply, which I applaud). But as such, it looks like a porn movie. The fact that the story is about teen sexuality makes it feel even more so. Perhaps this was the filmmakers intent (I know the intent is to make the audience uncomfortable, I’m just not sure if the porn quality was supposed to be part of that). It just made me uncomfortable that someone would catch me watching what looked like a porno.
Unferth describes the film as mumblecore, a genre I haven’t watched before (and probably won’t again). While the two main actors have expressive faces (especially June–who at the end is extremely emotive and indeed Crissy who is amazing in the final, wordless, scene), they can’t really carry a feature. It’s not even that the film is boring, it’s just…nothing–a series of scenes of the two girls in different locations talking about nothing. A home movie where your family doesn’t do anything.
In some ways this film is effective–it certainly conveys the angst and ennui of being a young girl, but it could easily have been completed in 30 minutes with no resultant loss of anything.
Unferth also commends the photography of the film—”but when framed by Nakadate’s expert photographer’s hand, the [scenes] have a meticulous, nonrealist feel, full of portent and bold symbolism, but exaggerated so, as if winking at the audience.” And yet the whole time I kept thinking that the filmmaking was beyond amateur. Scenes with clumsy refocusing mid shot. Unsteady zooms and pans. Scenes where nothing was in the frame. There’s nothing pretty (not even artsy-ugly-pretty) in the film. And that’s a shame because when your film is not propelled by dialogue or action, the photos are all you have left.
The ultimate destination of their road trip is preposterous–Crissy wants to meet her former teacher and maybe move in with him (yet we find out that he was her THIRD GRADE teacher?? Come on). And yet that final scene is purposeful and wonderfully uncomfortable. And here the photography and the really wooden nature of the acting really work. The scene is dark and creepy and (details aside) really quite affecting–possibly because the actor is so wooden we don’t know what is going to happen. And the climax of the film (with the two girls alone again) is more intense because of it.
Nakadate has previously done short films and I imagine that in the environment of short films both the video quality of the footage and the lack of substantial plot time would work to her advantage. As I said, if this film were 30 minutes long, with each location being a minute or two instead of ten, this film would have been uncomfortably enjoyable.
I appreciate the message and the evocative nature of the film, though. I just wish she’d said it more quickly.
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