I go see films no one else sees.
DEAR WENDY:
9/10
Well…when I heard this film was written by Lars Von Trier (Breaking the Waves, Dogville, Dancer in the Dark) and directed by Vinterberg, I figured I should see it. And when I heard that it was getting tacked with the dreaded “anti-American” label from pretty much critics across the board here (I think Roger Ebert actually only gave it one star! Now that’s how you know it’s gonna be good) with its take on gun violence, I knew I just had to see it. And then when I heard that the film was pretty much built around the songs of the Zombies, I started el-ing to the theater as fast as those little tracks could take me.
Click for more….a detailed description that does not give away the ending….
Vinterberg/Trier casted a few notable cast members. The first being Jamie Bell, who was the lead in Billy Elliot (and man has he grown…makes me feel a bit old, it does!) who handles the complexity of the role rather well. The second is Bill Pullman, who was born in the same town I was (now, you might shrug that off but Hornell, NY is a town of about 300 people and is where my father is from. The only real celebrity story I have involves Bill Pullman. Last Christmas, Cinchel and I were visiting my grandmother who still lives there and she was passing around a picture of a younger cousin of mine’s first lemonade stand. My grandma was passing around the picture to show off how cute little Sadie is. But immediately, Cinchel and I recognized Bill Pullman smiling at her lemonade stand with a cup in his hand.) Pullman plays the main policeman in the story who demonstrates a lack of insight but tries to handle a difficult situation as best as he can. Third, Alison Pill who was the younger daughter in a favorite film of mine, Pieces of April, plays another gun toting “pacifist” and is one of two females in the entire film. Last, Danso Gordon as Sebastian does a remarkable job of being the only one to actually bring insight into the descent into madness the gun toting self proclaimed Dandies have gotten caught up in.
It starts out simple, with what is thought of as a toy gun. Dick (Jamie Bell) buys it as a present and it is non-returnable. It’s essential to note that what he ends up giving to Sebastian instead is (one of my personal favorite books) Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Only, he gets it cheap because the last twenty pages are missing (no harm done there, it’s only the whole moral of the story, right?) Bell continues to assert his pacifism throughout while establishing a group made up of a handful of teens called the Dandies who practice shooting in the mines, study exit wounds, and famous murderers and who term the word “killing,” loving instead. (It’s at this moment we hear the brilliantly used Zombies song: “Time of the Season” with the lyric, “It’s the time of the season for loving.” Oh and they call their beloved hideout in the mine where they study and shoot off guns the “temple.”
The real brilliance of the film lies in the illustration of how irrationally afraid the people in the small US mining town are. The town has three or four buldings tops and a mine. Everyone knows eachother but yet, the owner of the tiny town grocery store where Jamie Bell works is scared to death of a robbery. Later on, we find that the maid that has raised Bell has turned agoraphobic with fear. They both talk of “gangs” yet the audience has yet to see any evidence of gangs. It certainly isn’t like it is in Chicago where you can’t walk one block without seeing graffiti tags on buildings and you can’t go too long without hearing about some gang initation. Yet, the people in this town were more afraid of gangs that people in Chicago whose fear would certainly be more reasonable. It’s amazing how well Lars captures small town mentality for someone whose never been here.
But the ultimate saying that applies here is the one that goes: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” from FDR’s first inagural address. Although Von Trier doesn’t use this quote, it becomes apparent that when people are afraid and immersed into a society of fear, they tend to lose any kind of semlance of logic. Ultimately, the “pacifict” dandies are so obsessed with guns that they can’t take any meaningful relationships with people farther. We have a clue about this right at the beginning when we see that the main character Dick is actually writing a letter not to his girl Wendy but to his gun, whose name is Wendy. Yeah, it’s sort of like his gun is his girlfriend.
There are some great moments of the film besides the use of the Zombies tunes….a couple of quotes: “I think pacifism with guns is a great idea.” and one that Pullman says when talking to Dick (Bell) the leader of the “pacificists:” “You’re the kind of boy this country was built on.” Indeed. That’s sort of the problem, isn’t it?
The parts that I found lacking were the heavy handedness of the surreality, especially towards the end, and the small inconsistencies. For instance, you sense it’s a southern town because there is a confederate flag in the background in one of the scenes. Yet, only half of the characters have southern accents. It’s confusing. In one scene, the main character eats a brand of crackers I’ve never heard of that I can only imagine was around on the set in Denmark and Bell grabbed because he was feeling peckish. Last, the main character’s father (who we never see) is just a miner in the small town and yet he can afford to hire a maid?
Perhaps the detail I liked least of the film was the fact that the first person in the story who happens to use a gun to kill another human is also the only black teenager we see in this town. It’s not that I think this was done intentionally as a racist statement…I mean, all of the teenagers are incredibly messed up gun toting “pacifists” but it still nonetheless plays into racist stereotypes.
But overall, I felt it was an adept criticism rich with a sense of irony and with a point of view that people besides mere film critics in America would benefit from opening up their minds and listening to. I wondered if it would have been received better if it had actually been written and directed by two Americans, as that seemed to be the main point of contention in the negative film reviews I read of it. Nah, they just would have been called, “Unpatriotic” instead.
Our pride is our fatal flaw.
For an interview with Trier and Vinterberg that I found helpful, click, here
October 9th, 2005 at 7:55 pm
[...] This is how the movie ends, leaving the viewer sitting there scratching her/his head. On gut reaction most reviews (like “this”http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?v_id=319397&oref=login&partner=Rotten%20Tomatoes&reviewer=A.%20O.%20Scott&title1=Dear%20Wendy%20%28Movie%29&title2=Dear%20Wendy%20%28Movie%29&pagewanted=print: and this ) derail Trier and Vinterburg for being unAmerican, and state things like you have never been here how dare you complain. Honestly, for the first 10 minutes or so after leaving the film I was seriously confused. In the traditional sense of a film, with plots, character development, and other logical things this is not. On the walk to dinner with Kirstie (who has this to say about the film) it dawned on me that this was far more then just a critism of America’s fascination with guns. Earlier that day we were talking about Full Metal Jacket Kubricks acurate portral of a solidiers life in Vietnam. The marring of the guns, the idea of keeping the main characters as kids, and even the slogan “Pacifists with Guns”, it was all a beautiful satire on America’s involventment in various wars. Vietnam and Iraq were both billed as peace missions, to free the ppl, lead by 18 year old kids, with guns and little else guiding them. Youthful idealism focus by youthful ignorance. The team of Trier and Vinterburg created a perfect balence of sarcasism and reality. An excellent film 9/10. [...]