Frownland

This was a comment I made on a YouTube channel review of the Criterion Collection release of this 2007 movie.  As such, it's not a review per se, but more a response to some of the two reviewers' remarks on the film, and so it presumes some familiarity with the film.

I watched this after seeing Patton Oswalt quasi-rave about it during his visit to The Criterion Closet, and in another clip on Trailers From Hell.  I can totally see why this film would appeal to almost no one, but I have to say I found it intriguing as a dark but vaguely humorous character study and mood piece. I'll admit that it was tough going at first, as I struggled to find something to either connect with or understand about it.  But as it went on I got more and more into it.

I agree with one commentator's tastefully discrete suggestion of the main character's "neurodivergence," as that came through strongly to me while watching the film (being "on the spectrum" myself, I tend to find cinematic depictions of the condition alternately fascinating and exasperating; this was much more of the former than the latter).  That said, I don't think his suggested neurodivergence was a matter of "just an amalgam of stereotypes," as has been stated, because Dore Mann's portrayal in the film gets so many specifically autistic traits so right that I'm tempted to wonder if the actor isn't on the spectrum himself (not that he'd need to be; that's why it's called acting ;-).

Some further reflections on the movie:

In the opening scene, I wondered how this guy even had a girlfriend, if that's who the Laura character is supposed to be. (Side note: the fact that she sports an old green Army jacket made me wonder if this was a reference to the Lindsay Weir character from Freaks and Geeks.)

While watching, I thought the Sandy character had to be Keith's brother, because what normal/functional person would be friends with someone like that.  But according to every review of the film I've read, he is indeed supposed to be Keith's only friend.

I suppose one of the modest successes of the movie is that it made me want to know more about the other people in Keith's life, such as Laura (what's with the numbered scenarios in her notebook?  She appears to be a student—if it's high school, why is she hanging out with twentysomething Keith?), and Sandy (why's he wearing a t-shirt with an NYPD logo in his last scene with Keith?  Did he work for the police dept. prior to becoming a waiter?  Or, maybe he is or was a social worker with professional ties to the police, which could explain not only the t-shirt, but also how he came to know Keith, and why he ostensibly feels some kind of obligation to help Keith).

I thought the brief scene with Keith disclosing to a psychotherapist a pivotal incident from his childhood was a nice touch.  And the way the therapist tried to guide Keith to insight about who he feels "betrayed" him in the incident felt authentic.

Roger Ebert, in his review, wondered about the purpose of the test-taking "digression."  As I watched the movie, I entertained two ideas about the test-taking sequence:  (1) it might serve as an audience break from the patience-trying and empathy-challenging assault of Keith's locked-in character; and (2) it looks like turning the tables on the roommate, Charles, who in one of the previous scenes had berated and belittled Keith; but then in the stairwell scene after the LSAT test, Charles himself is treated the same disparaging and scornful way by the other test-taker, who seems more intellectually dominant and verbally expressive than Charles, just as Charles is (or at least comes off as) more intellectually dominant and verbally expressive than Keith.  Basically, the scene seems to demonstrate a hierarchy of intellectual bullying.

As for the complaint among some commentators that the film "doesn't go anywhere," I don't think the absence of a plot or contrived dramatic tension are necessarily deficits in any film; as mentioned in a comparison from one online review, Slacker (1990) is both plotless and meandering, though I'll agree that it's a vastly more entertaining movie than Frownland.  And I've seen many other effective and evocative films that are much less about plot than about character, atmosphere, and/or stringing together otherwise unconnected vignettes.

But even apart from that, it seems to me that there might be something like a character arc in this movie: in the early scene where the female friend is sobbing to the point of dripping with mucus, Keith tries to explain to her that he can't cry, and then proceeds to force his eyes to water by spreading them wide open for over a minute.  But by the end of the story, he's undergone such a maelstrom of humiliation and frustration that he's finally been brought to an emotional catharsis even more extreme (and disgustingly mucusy) than Laura's.

The fact that this last act transpired over what almost looked like a Dantean descent into hell (note the red glow of the room where the drunk guys toy with him), followed (post-purgation) by a later re-emergence into the rooftop sunrise (rebirth?), further suggests that there wasn't literally nothing happening in this film, and moreover, that what did happen was actually meaningful.