![]() Gallo's courage in making a film that goes directions that are non-commercial, unpopular and not cinematically viable is admirable and awesome. ![]() It is a film about one man's journey, not just a journey across the country, but a journey through loss and grief and loneliness. However, I will remain eternally grateful that Gallo re-entered the studio to redesign his vision and edit his film because the final film released to art-house theatres this month is a film of unique power and vision. "The Brown Bunny" is NOT a cinematic masterpiece. For those few who choose, it can open the heart and the soul as only a masterpiece can.What could have possibly driven Vincent Gallo? What could have possibly driven a man who created the film that Roger Ebert called "the worst film" he'd ever seen at Cannes Film Festival? What could have driven Gallo, who writes, directs, scores and stars in "The Brown Bunny" to swallow his pride and take this film back into the studio to reshape and edit and re-arrange pieces of this film AND to break his loud statement that he would "never make another film?" Was it humility? Anyone who knows or has read anything about Gallo knows that humility doesn't typically enter the picture.perhaps, then, it simply is that Gallo, through the loud booing of Cannes and the criticisms and the taunts and tortures KNEW, ABSOLUTELY KNEW that there was a film of beauty within the chaos of "The Brown Bunny." Gallo knew what nobody else could see.that crying out to be seen here was a film of substance and power and emotion that is seldom seen in cinema today. To see The Brown Bunny requires the sort of patience and reverence reserved for museums and galleries. The arid lovemaking of this star-crossed couple, in a room lit like an operating room before a lobotomy, appears so natural that at its' heart could only be the sheer necessity of moral and emotional collapse seeking salvation. Yet here again, the Audience, as an extension of Bud's own painful emptiness, will find no release. In a sterile, white motel room, Gallo's film culminates with a scene of erotic abandon. ![]() Cheryl Tiegs, the popular Seventies model, makes an unexpected cinematic comeback, delivering a beautifully poetic performance as a lonely woman in a nowhere rest stop. For Bud, Gallo playing the sort of brooding innocent Marlon Brando once jarred audiences with, the American tapestry becomes a home movie of the banality of human existence. Chloƫ Sevigny, in yet another hypnotic role as Daisy, redefines the modern insistence on two-dimensional antagonists. ![]() Gallo's characters are ethereal spirits cast upon a harsh, unfriendly world. By creating a film of singular vision perhaps only attainable by doing what few directors have the tenacity or perseverance to undertake, Gallo has achieved what has eluded many an 'independent' director: a film created almost solely by the director. Here, where many entertainment-seeking viewers will have long left the theater, one suddenly realizes that Gallo's is not a simple indie flick but instead, a floating canvas able to tap into a higher meditative consciousness within the viewer. America, as seen through the window of Gallo's hollow black van, merges into a singular one-story wasteland of Main Streets lined with reds, whites and blues. The Brown Bunny, Vincent Gallo's latest travelogue of sorrow, charts the journey of the sort of disenchanted hero one comes across in the obituary page of their local paper. ![]()
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