No, not the album, this is the film, tho' I can see little to draw 'em together, beyond a post-exposural pleasure. OK, it's been wee while since it was at the cinema, but being consciously art house fare, I dare say that a blink would have missed it at the mainstream. As ever the Johnny come lately, there being no cinema in my town, I caught it on the telly, where it's lack of action and defiant monochrome fitted the small screen perfectly.
A slim tale, it recounts the tale of a washed-up innocent, albeit with a back draft of booze and bad-parenting, searching for an unassailable truth, known these days as money for nothing. My definition of a road movie is one that so little happens that you have time to grasp the inaction, and this fitted that bill consummately. Black and white demonstrated the drive-over state reality of the american dream, memories set in a stark stucco of poverty and resentment, boredom being the only action in town.
Bruce Dern plays the hero, a phrase used with all irony, as Woody, emoting an identifiably lost identity, whilst his son, played by Will Forte, tries to haul it and hold it all together, acting as the ghost of christmas present for his fathers wish. The film is nearly stolen by June Squibb as Woody's wife, initially seeming long-suffering, before demonstrating an exquisite insufferability, coloured with vivid dismissals of most if not all in her orbit, a kiss at the end making it all (nearly) worthwhile. A near unrecognisable Stacy Keach plays the bad guy, with nary a trace of leading man visible in his ravaged physique.
I loved it.
Find it and be enriched.
Also well worth a mention is a fantastically bleak soundtrack, from which I enclose this clip. Mark Orton is responsible, and it is available to buy.
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