Julie's Sundance MacPark Billy Meeting
By now you have all read the professional, commercial, and trade reviews of MacArthur Park, so you should have an image of what to expect the first time you see it. When I attended my first screening, I had only read the brief synopsis in the Sundance catalogue, and I had no idea what to expect. I have to admit that I didn't anticipate that I would love this movie. I was a little biased against the genera, and I was worried about what I would write for this site if I couldn't find enough honest complimentary comments. But my worries dissolved just minutes into the first scene, when I was already genuinely invested in the characters. And by the end I was overwhelmed by them. In fact, there were images that I couldn't shake for days.
Let me begin by saying that you will never see a more humble and grateful director introduce his film. His words were brief, and every one of them was spoken in gratitude to the people involved in the actual work, and to the supporters in the audience.
The basic story can be told in a nutshell. A group of people living in limbo find that their drug-induced panacea cannot eradicate reality forever, and each one meets a different kind of end. The intricacies of the story will take much longer to express. But it wasn't the plot so much as the message that made this an accessible work of art. I'd like to share with you what I saw in this movie, as an individual audience member, as opposed to a critic.
The most striking characteristic that separated this film from others at the festival was its pace. Instead of following a Hollywood market-tested formula, it unfolded with a refreshingly life-like rhythm. Opportunities and crises were forced on the characters without warning or apology. After one screening I listened to two audience members who agreed that the film "sprung these things that you just couldn't deal with on you, like out of the blue, and you just aren't up to dealing with it, but then you find out you can because you just have to. There's no choice." I could add that sometimes the characters I wanted to like let me down. The tragedies they experienced that were imminent yet still disturbing forced me to suffer helplessly along with them. All this realism forced me into the Park with the characters, and it took some time afterwards to come back to my own life.
As for the artistic aspect of the film, the realism was supported by scaffolding of metaphor. There were many images that reinforced the story line. For example, a girl who is new to LA enters the park on roller skates, and literally has to struggle to keep her feet under her. Later, after a generous dose of what life in the park is like, her metaphorical footing is made sure when she is compelled (by Blue) to take control of her situation and steer herself back on track. She climbs onto a bus and goes back home. Her dictum "I can take care of myself!" has become a fact. Then there are more subtle metaphors, like a brief image of shooting craps on the pavement in the early morning that reminds us that every day they are gambling with things infinitely more precious than crumpled dollar bills. The most obvious metaphor is a watch that gets smashed, reminding us of the time the main character Cody has lost while in self-imposed exile from his wife and his son Terry. Cody purchased it as a gift for Terry, and when a gang member stomps on it, the time lost becomes painfully evident.
These metaphors also illustrate the forks in the path that still appear before the characters even though they are miles down the wrong side. A man slouches on a park bench with a crack pipe in his hand, and a clean and sober friend stands on the opposite side, the California sunshine streaming down behind her. On another occasion, Cody fires up his crack pipe and remembers a time when it was a horn that he held to his lips; a tool of music and beauty, as opposed to one of destruction and escape.
Somewhere along the way it became clear to me that chronic drug use and criminal behavior are not in juxtaposition to loving relationships, parental instinct, and familial loyalties. In fact they are almost impossible to separate. Being addicts did not stop some of these characters from caring deeply about each other, especially Cody. He repeatedly plays a paternal role to the members of his incidental 'family.' He instinctively provides protection to a young girl when she is approached by a dangerous element. He is a healer and provider. Most significantly, he is a mentor to an aspiring musician named P-Air, like a son following in his father's footsteps. At the same time, he is the source for the drug that both inhibits their lives and helps them to cope. It is impossible to separate his benevolent motivations from his crimes.
There were moments when I found myself painfully aware that no one else can see your demons. In my mind I struggled to help Cody find the words he needed to communicate his situation to others, especially the ones who struggled to help or at least understand him. But the same spirits did not plague everyone, or even people who shared his situation. There were too many invisible demons that had to be exorcised before the inhibition of an addiction could even be addressed. These are the ghosts that drove him to the pipe and to the Park. And eventually, they became the things that he found himself fighting all alone.
There were two scenes that had the greatest effect on me. They were so meticulously orchestrated (and edited) that I felt like I was still reeling when I left the theater. The first was a party scene at the home of a shooting-star TV actor, where Cody and P-Air are indulging gluttonously in their habits. I felt as if I was just as engorged with the drugs-as well as the fears and passions that drove them to it-as they were. As I mentally pleaded with them to stop indulging and pursue the goal that had brought them there, I also empathized with their fears of proceeding. The freedom from the Park and the addiction seemed to be just beyond their fingertips for most of the film, and in this scene it was possible that it was sitting in the next room. It was exhausting!
The second scene is the actual process of Cody passing through his dark night of the soul. The pain and confusion triggered by the sudden, senseless death of an Innocent, coupled with the shock of the murder of a friend (and suicide of the murderer,) compounded by the news of his wife's death and the reappearance of his son, are too much for one man to take. The feelings and memories that he has kept at bay with the help of the bottle and the pipe attack him en mass, and it seems as if he is being dragged by wild horses through the valley of his demons. The camera convulses along with him and the colors and shadows contort and wrench the audience into the same disfigurement that he is suffering. His former existence as a jazz musician, husband, and father-which were dissatisfying enough to drive him to abandon them-come back as forcefully and deliberately as an old enemy, driven by vengeance. Like Faust, he wrestles himself to the edge of the cliff that separates Heaven and Hell, and looks into the heart of each, prepared with a gun in his hand and aimed at his head. And since we have already seen several of the characters we have grown attached to meet their ugly fates, we honestly can't guess which one he will choose. Finally, in a state well beyond exhaustion, the ghosts are sated and the memories quelled, and he collapses on the pavement.
The next time we see Cody, he has returned to his house and sits next to his son, surrounded by packed boxes from his former life. But there are others who have not been so fortunate. The eminence of a reoccurrence of just such a chain of events is suggested in the soft cracking of Blue's voice as she sits in the back of a cab and hoarsely whispers her destination. "MacArthur Park."
--------Julie Brown 2001 Sundance
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