Movie Reviews 5

Movie Reviews 5

In “The Dig” (2018), after serving fifteen years for Niamh’s murder, Callahan returns home to find Sean, Niamh’s father, searching for her body by digging holes on Callahan’s land. Callahan has no idea what really happened on the night Niamh disappeared because he was dead drunk at the time. But even without a body, he was convicted anyway because he was in a relationship with Niamh and the locals, thirsty for vengeance, rushed to judgement. Callahan realizes that the only way to get rid of Sean is to help him dig. So, he joins Sean out on the bog and together they dig holes to no avail for the next hour or so of movie time, with brief interludes exploring the relationships among Callahan, Sean, Niamh’s younger sister Roberta, village lawman Murphy, and the villagers in general. It’s all quite dreary, and the viewer wonders if this is one of those movies that will end in an existential funk with no resolution whatsoever or if it might play out as a mystery with a clever “solution.” We can say no more about the plot without spoiling it for you. Except to say that you should persevere to the end. And to pose a challenge for you. The very last line of the movie, before it fades to credits, is an enigmatic question, posed by Sean and directed toward Callahan. Can you make sense of that question? What does it mean? It will make you think, and any movie that does that is worth a look.

If you are looking for something that is offbeat wacky and weird, take “Hundreds of Beavers” (2022) for a spin. The movie was shot in black & white, sped up, and contains no intelligible dialogue, all to simulate a silent-film vibe. (In the few instances where the director wanted dialogue, it is delivered as subtitles.) The plot, such as it is, involves an applejack in the frozen north (somewhere) whose cider mill is burned down in an accident to start the movie. He must learn how to survive in the harsh setting without his normal livelihood. At first, he tries trapping rabbits, but they easily outwit him. Then he discovers beavers, and the war between hero and beavers commences. What follows is just under two hours of Buster-Keaton-meets-Jeremiah-Johnson complete with unremitting slapstick comedy and various Rube Goldberg devices that usually fail spectacularly. Along the way, our hero also encounters a nasty pack of wolves with an attitude. Rabbits, beavers, and wolves are played by humans dressed in ridiculous-looking costumes. CGI adds flies, worms, fish, and birds (one of which, a woodpecker, appears regularly to trigger several of the devices mentioned above). Subplots involve the hero hooking up with a fur trader to whom he sells his beaver pelts and the trader’s daughter for whom the hero develops a romantic attachment. (In one scene, she vamps him by suddenly losing her clothes in the snow and doing a pole dance in her underwear for him. Did I mention that this movie is weird?) Ultimately, the hero discovers the beavers’ inner sanctum, a wood processing plant where they refine the wood they harvest from the forests. There is a final showdown of sorts. It’s impossible to take any of it seriously, but that’s the film’s intent. The whole enterprise is a thin excuse for unremitting slapstick comedy. If that sort of thing appeals, then you can’t go wrong with this movie.

At the completely opposite end of the spectrum is “The Memory Thief” (2007), a chilling examination of how an obsession can take over a person’s life and consume that person. Mark Webber plays Lukas, a young man whose life has no meaning. By day he collects tolls at a booth on the freeway. By night he visits a catatonic woman in the hospital who accepts his ministrations stoically. He claims the woman is his mother, but later in the movie, in a thread that is never developed further, we are given reason to believe that his claim is doubtful. One day, out of the blue, a holocaust survivor arrives at his booth, sees him reading “Mein Kampf,” and throws a fit. The man returns a few days later and gives Lukas a video tape to watch. The tape depicts a holocaust survivor giving “testimony” about what went on in the camps. Lukas is hooked. He joins something called the “Holocaust Survivors Group” which produces the testimony tapes. He wants to be an interviewer on the testimony tapes, but he can’t get past the training period because his supervisor senses that there is something disturbing about his intensity. He meets a med student named Rachel whose father is also a survivor. He gets his own video-taping equipment and pressures the father to let him record the elder man’s testimony. The father finally allows it, makes the tape, but is so depressed afterward that he commits suicide. Lukas loses any chance he might have had with Rachel, and his life goes straight into the toilet. He “becomes” a survivor himself, shaves his head, dons the standard camp outfit (striped pajamas), gets himself beaten up by a group of neo-Nazi punks, and is last seen wandering the subway. If you have the stomach for an uncompromising downer movie, this is it.