Not many of you know this, but I've double majored in college. The Comparative Literature program didn't offer enough credit to award bachelor degrees, so I took another major in Cinema Studies. I'd lie if I'd say it gave me any valuable insight I could share with you on this blog. To be honest, it's a program where you can graduate while never really knowing what the fuck you're talking about. Whatever you might find of interest on this blog straight from my mind and my extracurricular readings both. Of course I graduated anyway, because college is a financial game first and foremost, and I got what I paid several thousand dollars for.
I'm using this memory as a preface to my review of Pablo D'Stair's movie HULLY GULLY, because it was a nice throwback to my years of watching the discombobulating mandatory curriculum of my classes and wondering how the hell I would write a 5 pages essay about it. I admired HULLY GULLY for its lean and subtly refined form, but get ready for an extremely personal review because I have no idea whatever the hell it was supposed to be about.
HULLY GULLY's a series of domestic scenes happening between long-time couple Daphne (Helene Bonaparte) and the punchable Reggie (Carlyle Edwards), who have been together for seemingly so long, that they don't look at each other, can't stand to talk to one another without doing something else and sometimes don't even make sense (because they're not listening to what the other is saying?). There are also other scenes where Reggie hangs out with what seems to be friends of his (or maybe friends of the couple), where he seems to question the nature of his relationship to Daphne. I'm not exactly sure it's what happened during those scenes, but at least it's what it seemed to me.
There is no doubt that visually speaking, HULLY GULLY's an interesting film. It's a series of loosely interrelated scenes in the tradition of Jim Jarsmusch's STRANGER THAN PARADISE and COFFEE AND CIGARETTES, or if you're not artsy-fartsy enough, think about Kevin Smith's cult movie CLERKS. There is also a different song playing in the background of each scene, which I thought was interesting and set the movie apart from its influences. I love these movies, so I was somewhat sold to the concept, but these very films vow a crucial importance to dialogue, and rhythm and all the little things that can make a viewing experience seamless, and it's where HULLY GULLY took the wrong turn and lost me somewhere between two highway exits.
Pictured above with the cigarette in his mouth: the punchable Reggie.
I have to admit that I cheated, and I industriously grilled screenwriter and director Pablo D'Stair on Facebook before writing this review. The concept of meaning being necessary to my viewing experience, I refused to throw in the towel and admit defeat to a movie that denied it to me. I can take a movie that means nothing at all, I mean, I thought KOOYANISQATSI was beautiful. HULLY GULLY's definitely about something, but it doesn't want the viewer to know. It reminded me of the content of the purloined letter in the famous Edgar Allan Poe story.
D'Stair made a good argument about his movie being aggressively subtextual and that the meaning of HULLY GULLY wasn't in the scenes itself, or in the succession of them. Some movies are like that, they require an active puzzle solving effort from the viewer in order to be enjoyed. That's fine. There are some movies like that I enjoy. The idiosyncratic nature of HULLY GULLY makes it a poor team player though as it understands whatever it is that it's about and it doesn't engage the viewer about it. The best way I can describe this movie to you is that it's like a person speaking to herself without using full sentences.
HULLY GULLY highlighted one of my biggest limitations as a viewer/reader and I believe it's why it was such a confusing - and ultimately frustrating - experience to me. I'm an intellectual blue collar. I was raised on murder mysteries and Sylvester Stallone movies, so there's a limit of abstraction I can take, especially in a movie that's centered around people and dialogue. It always has to go somewhere and to add up to more to the sum of its parts to me, or I don't see the fucking point. I'm not saying you shouldn't see HULLY GULLY. It's an oddly beautiful film shot in a tradition I'm a fan of. It just beat me. It pinned me for the 1-2-3, like so many films I've seen in college. It left me staring at my screen like Ashton Kutcher stared in DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR?
...like that.
Don't go to college if you don't know what to do with your life, kids. It's overrated.