{"id":2120,"date":"2012-01-10T21:33:24","date_gmt":"2012-01-11T02:33:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/?p=2120"},"modified":"2021-08-26T10:35:01","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T15:35:01","slug":"bellflower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/10\/bellflower\/","title":{"rendered":"Bellflower"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Bob Byington\u2019s comedy Harmony and Me<\/em><\/a> (2010), Harmony (Justin Rice) complains to an acupuncturist about his ex-girlfriend, \u201cShe broke my heart, but she\u2019s still at it. She hasn\u2019t finished the job. She\u2019s breaking my heart.\u201d He continues, \u201cMy heart is a snack. She\u2019s like a bear with a fish in its paw.\u201d Evan Glodell\u2019s wildly kinetic and completely engaging Bellflower <\/em>(2011) deals with the same subject matter, the absolute pain and misery of a broken heart, but his version is inspired by the Mad Max<\/em> movies that the film\u2019s protagonist, Woodrow (played by Glodell himself), and his adoring Jughead-like best friend, Aiden (Tyler Dawson), saw on TV and then on VHS as kids in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

Bellflower<\/em> begins with what at first seems like a prolepsis and may, in fact, be a flashback: shots of a crying couple, various key scenes from the film playing in reverse, and finally a head-on shot of the film\u2019s dazed protagonist before it cuts to black. There\u2019s a quote that references The Road Warrior<\/em>, \u201cLord Humungous cannot be defied.\u201d In voiceover, we listen as Aiden lays out their fantasy for the end of the world. The two friends will turn up in a bad-ass, flamethrowing muscle car, \u201cand one of us gets out with a hundred pounds of brass and steel strapped to our back, and just starts torching everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Glodell\u2019s apocalyptic Bellflower<\/em> is a complex play on the thriller and buddy genres, with the dialogue between the two male characters loaded with sexual innuendo that they seem unaware of, but will cause most viewers to chuckle. Aiden compares Woodrow to Lord Humungus and tells him: \u201cOkay, listen. We\u2019re going out tonight. If I even catch you looking at someone \u2013 I don\u2019t care if it\u2019s a fucking guy. You are going to hit on them. You are going to pick them up. You are going to take them home. And I\u2019m going to be right by your side the whole time.\u201d For these dudes, true male camaraderie knows no bounds.<\/p>\n

The story is told in chapters. In the first, \u201cThe Pursuit of Happiness,\u201d after the two friends nearly finish assembling their flamethrower, they wind up in a bar where Woodrow gets into a cricket-eating contest with an attractive blonde named Milly (Jessie Wiseman). She trounces him at downing live insects, but he ends up asking her out on a date. The next evening, he politely shows up at her house with a small bouquet of hand-picked flowers. Because it\u2019s their first date, Woodrow wants to take her to someplace nice, but she prefers that he take her to the \u201ccheapest, nastiest, scariest place\u201d he knows. \u201cOh, my God,\u201d Woodrow responds disbelievingly, but Milly’s request sends them on a journey from Los Angeles to Texas. As they lie together in the back seat of a car and he giggles with delight at their blossoming romance, Millie warns Woodrow that she\u2019ll hurt him. A true tough guy, he doesn’t believe it.<\/p>\n

While Woodrow and Millie are away, Aiden hooks up with Milly\u2019s best friend, Courtney (Rebekah Brandes). At her birthday party, when Aiden drunkenly insults a woman and a huge thug accosts him, Woodrow rushes to the aid of his friend and smashes a beer bottle over the guy\u2019s head, forcing them to split. Woodrow and Milly make love later on, but when Woodrow tells her he\u2019s leaving for a day, their blissful courtship comes to an abrupt and bitter end. This leads to intrigue and betrayals of all sorts, involving the four main characters in the film.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the plot of Bellflower<\/em> that keeps us riveted, so much as the film\u2019s visual pizzazz, its golden and fiery orange color palette, rhythmic pacing, comic antics, and the intricate way the love story is interwoven with Woodrow and Aiden\u2019s adolescent quest to build a flamethrower and Medusa car in anticipation of the world\u2019s imminent demise. Woodrow\u2019s broken heart leads to a terrible car accident that leaves him temporarily incapacitated and then to a fury that turns Woodrow into a vengeful monster, who unleashes an inferno that’s been foreshadowed by Aiden\u2019s initial voiceover.<\/p>\n

Reportedly made on a shoestring budget, Bellflower<\/em> was a surprise hit at last year’s Sundance Film Festival. It is an obvious labor of love by a collective group of friends (Coatwolf Productions), who dedicated themselves to making this incredibly ambitious project over an extended period of time \u2013 without the financial means and against impossible odds. Bellflower<\/em> definitely calls to mind a number of filmic references, including Harmony Korine\u2019s deliberate degradation of the image in Trash Humpers<\/em> (2010). And listening to the film\u2019s awkward naturalistic dialogue, it\u2019s hard not to think of numerous mumblecore films:<\/p>\n

MILLY: So, who are you, where are you from, what do you do?
\nWOODROW: Ah, wow! Okay . . . I live around here, but I\u2019m from Wisconsin originally. And I spend . . .
\nShe looks down at his shoes.<\/em>
\nMILLY: Oh, my God!
\nWOODROW: What?
\nMILLY: Sorry. Your shoes.
\nCut to a shot of his tattered sneakers<\/em>.
\nWOODROW: Oh, yeah! I need to get new ones. They\u2019re pretty bad . . .
\nMILLY: I\u2019m sorry. I\u2019m sorry. What do you do?
\nWOODROW: I\u2019m building a flamethrower.
\nMILLY: You\u2019re building a flamethrower?
\nWOODROW: Yes.
\nMILLY: Fuck you.
\nWOODROW: No, I really am, and I\u2019m really excited about it.
\nMILLY: That is probably the weirdest thing I ever heard. I like you.
\nWOODROW: I like you too.<\/p>\n

If the acting style is rooted in naturalism, the performances by Glodell, Tyler Dawson, Jessie Wiseman, and Rebekah Brandes transcend the style. Dawson, as Glodell\u2019s impish sidekick, causes every scene he\u2019s in to sparkle with his nutty brand of humor, while Wiseman and Brandes are perfect in their roles and would seem to have promising careers ahead of them. It\u2019s hard to imagine how a low-budget DIY film like this could get better acting from a cast of unknown performers.<\/p>\n

Not only did the filmmaker and his crew build an actual flamethrower, from parts culled from a hardware store, that shoots a burst of flame 72 feet, but they also spent a great deal of the budget on their flame-spewing Medusa car, which left P. Diddy so impressed he forked over a “grand” toward their project. And they adapted a digital camera with lenses that had dirt smeared on them, which gives Bellflower<\/em> the antique quality it strives for.<\/p>\n

Some people might try to dismiss Bellflower<\/em> as merely a juvenile male fantasy, but the film deals with a substantive issue \u2013 the transformational power of love, and when it goes sour, its attendant dark side. I\u2019m convinced the film provides its own self-critique. The bravado and macho fantasies of Woodrow and Aiden are a way of their overcompensating for their inadequacies. Early on in the bar, Milly insists that Aidan is \u201ca little bit of a bastard,\u201d but Woodrow, of course, defends him. He responds, \u201cAiden? No, he\u2019s just crazy. Once you get to know him, he’s like the sweetest dude you\u2019ll ever know.\u201d \u201cSweet\u201d is a word these dudes throw around with abandon, but they seem acutely aware that their fantasies are completely gendered.<\/p>\n

As a narrative, Bellflower<\/em> is far more complicated than it first appears. Two viewings have yet to answer all my questions, which involve its temporal shifts and multiple endings. It\u2019s like Glodell is so in love with his film that he can\u2019t seem to let it conclude. Even after the end of the world, Bellflower<\/em> somehow manages to play on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Bob Byington\u2019s comedy Harmony and Me (2010), Harmony (Justin Rice) complains to an acupuncturist about his ex-girlfriend, \u201cShe broke my heart, but she\u2019s still at it. She hasn\u2019t finished the job. She\u2019s breaking my heart.\u201d He continues, \u201cMy heartRead More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2115,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,1,28],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2120"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2120"}],"version-history":[{"count":110,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4353,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2120\/revisions\/4353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}