FROWNLAND Takes Cinematexas to Its Grave

I used to laugh smugly at the ridiculous idea that the audience present at the 1913 premiere of the ballet “The Rite of Spring” were so upset by Stravinsky’s ground-breaking music and Nijinsky’s style-shattering dance that they screamed at the orchestra, dancers, and composer and were at the very edge of rioting. Then last night I saw FROWNLAND (Ronald Bronstein, 2007), the final presentation of Cinematexas. For the first five minutes I was laughing at the painfully inarticulate protagonist Keith. Then I felt sorry for him for another five minutes. But fifteen minutes into the film I wanted him dead. I kept wishing other characters would “hurt him bad.” His pathological inability to express himself –open-mouthed stuttering, incoherent gesticulating, repulsive fidgeting – reduced me to a tense, nervous, maniacal wreck. The film is brilliant, the acting is letter perfect, the direction is masterful and I hated it all. My liver shot streams of bile into my mouth and I was on the verge of spitting vitriol onto the screen. I honestly thought I was going to explode before the movie ended, and yet I couldn’t leave because I needed to see Keith be murdered in a hundred horrible ways. I kept hoping that this or that character would be the one to rip his tongue-tied head off. When he suffered his final meltdown and poured forth all his muddled feelings, I thought I would finally get release, but NO, he survived. Don’t get angry that I’ve revealed the end of the movie, because that is not what it’s about – a nice little plot line to tie up all the loose ends. No, Keith is still out there unnecessarily taking up space.

I didn’t stay for the Q&A. I was so full of rage at having all these negative feelings toward a cinematic character dredged up from inside me that had I stayed, all I could have told the director was, “I have just one comment. GODDAMN YOU!” He couldn’t have possibly understood that this was the highest compliment I could pay him for making a film that made me feel so much, even if nothing but horrifying rage. Instead, I left the Alamo Ritz and rushed out to 6th Street, intent on smashing the first stranger’s face I saw as a ridiculous attempt at catharsis. I am not normally violent, but FROWNLAND turned me into a dangerous beast. If a movie could “adopt” a movie, then FIGHT CLUB would use FROWNLAND as a recruitment film, after which I would have signed up instantly. Fortunately for humanity I ran into Ivan Lozano of Cinematexas. He wisely and compassionately allowed me to vent all my spleen. I no longer felt a need to attack any strangers to drain the poison out of my body. I drove home and watched LA ZANDUNGA (1937), one of the Mexican films we will be showing in late January as part of an Essential Cinema series. It was full of music and beautiful people and a 4-way romance that further calmed me down and let me sleep with the angels instead of making someone sleep with the fish.

Why did I respond to this film in such an extreme way? The pop psychology explanation would be that I see something of myself in Keith. Well, fuck that! Of course, nearly all of us, especially in our teens and early 20s, had periods of not feeling understood or appreciated or listened to. Perhaps there were certain people we got tongue-tied around. But every moment in every situation? Constantly unable to say even the simplest thing or explain our feelings or needs or desires? All the time? That would be hell, and most of us eventually found a way to move on beyond it sheerly out of boredom with that state of mind. Say what you have to say and move on, understood or not. And we have probably all had a “friend” or acquaintance that couldn’t always get his/her words out clearly, but the more understanding you are (or pretend to be), the more that person will begin to depend on you as someone who “understands” him/her. Unless the sex is good, get away!

Admittedly, the first time I saw David Lynch’s ERASERHEAD, I actually walked out of the Varsity Theater on Guadalupe midway through (4th movie I had ever left before the end), but something about the film made me go back a few days later and sit through all its miraculous moments. I grew to love the film and used it in some of my RTF classes at ACC. FROWNLAND? I never want to see it again, not even a clip. But I will highly recommend it to most of my friends and every film-lover – not as a masochistic exercise but as a film that challenges some of the sacred tenets of humanism and potentially turns the viewer into a raving madman. Few works of art today can elicit such a radical response from our jaded culture.

A final word: it is precisely works of art like FROWNLAND that made Cinematexas such an exciting film festival. You never knew exactly what you were going to experience – something challenging, something boring, but always something worthy of attention, if but for a moment. The demise of Cinematexas leaves a gaping hole in Austin’s film culture. AFS and the various film festivals bring a wealth of films to our community, but the truly experimental avant-garde productions will have to find some other way into our hearts, minds, and livers. Congratulations to Bryan Poyser and Spencer Parsons for so lovingly sending Cinematexas off to the special Valhalla reserved for important film festivals and film organizations. And final thanks to Rachel Tsangari who created Cinematexas in the first place. She has returned to Olympus from whose vantage point she can create new wonders, but Cinematexas will always be one of the highpoints of her cultural life.