HESHER....the loser with the heart of gold

A few weeks ago I had the great opportunity to visit the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, TX. I only spent three days there, but out of the eight films I saw there was only one that I highly recommend seeing once it hits theaters. The film is called Hesher (2010), and let me tell you, it’s the kind of indie film that reeks of originality and candidness. The cast is superb, the humor is down-right dirty, and the dialogue crackles with witty one-liners.

Hesher is a quirky black comedy that never lets up with its mordant sense of humor. In the spirit of Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and The Good Girl (2002), here is an indie flick with the right amount of rudeness, humor, and heart. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception and Mysterious Skin) leads the cast as Hesher; a loser with no direction in life. Hesher lives in his van, never washes his grungy long hair, and lives to feed off other people, and their own misery. He’s a nihilistic tool in the worse sense, but still, the veteran 20-something actor, Levitt, has the uncanny ability of exuding a certain charm about this misfit of an asshole character. Furthermore, in reality, the actor transforms from a nice Jewish boy from the suburbs to a pot-smoking arsonist with nothing but an attitude problem.

Hesher finds himself taking advantage of a broken-home, due to the loss of a young boy’s mother. He barges in, and he acts like it’s his own home, including watching porn in his underwear on the living room couch. This character plays on the weak and usually waits for someone to have the balls to discard his disgusting presence. Fortunately, for Hesher, the family he’s barged in on is grieving for a loss in their family, and events that take to the turn for the….well surprisingly, the better, in a more therapeutic sense.

The one that everyone hates and despises for his utter crudeness towards humanity just happens to be the very one to breath life into a broken-family, numb with emotional turmoil. At this point of the story, the writing and character development soar to another level; the poignant battles we must go through to deal with grief.

The stellar cast also includes Rainn Wilson, best known as a comedian on the hit show The Office plays the empty and forever-in-grief father. Piper Laurie plays the elderly grandmother, and I’m sorry for Carrie (1976) fans, but she does not lock up any family member in the closet to pray for forgiveness. Piper Laurie’s performance is as genuine and serene as any typical grandmother who smokes pot to help with her glaucoma. Natalie Portman plays a grocery clerk who also happens to become a part of Hesher’s whirlwind of destruction and later on, redemption. The key to the relationship between Hesher and this strange family is an adolescent boy, T.J. (Devin Brochu) played with the perfect sensibility of any angry, adolescent boy.

Hesher is the kind of indie film to take your friends out and laugh at the ridiculous, yet original dilemmas, and then, find a place in your heart to empathize with every character, no matter what bad things they might have done.

***1/2 (out of four stars)

RANGO.....the lizard with no name

Rango is by far one of the strangest animated films geared towards kids I’ve seen in a while. The film begins with our lizard hero addressing the camera as he plays make believe in his safe environment; a glass tank situated in the back of a sedan. Suddenly, an abrupt accident causes him to lose his safe enclosed home and venture into a new life in the middle of the desert. From here, the film stays true to the western genre, and introduces a variety of creepy-looking animated possums, armadillos, porcupines, rattle snakes and other familiar desert creatures. The animators and director Gore Virbinski uses the depleted desert as a metaphor to express an ill-resourced environment where the citizens are barely surviving. The folks inhabiting the town “Dirt” are cleverly animated as gray, ashy and weak, suggesting they are deeply deprived of water.

In fact, water plays an important role in the film as the single greatest resource to both sustain and destroy a desert habitat. Civilization vs. the landscape is a common theme in the western genre dating back to the 1930s and in Rango, the writers take it to a more intricate level. As Rango begins to learn about the towns folk he uncovers corruption amongst the highest order of citizens. The subtext is reminiscent of one of the greatest private-eye mysteries ever made, Chinatown (1974), which uses water as a means to hold the most power in a desert town. In Chinatown, it was 1930s LA, but in Rango, it’s a stereotypical western town.

As much as I enjoyed the more adult themes in a so-called “kids” movie, I was slightly put-off by the range of western clichés, such as walking into the saloon where only the scariest inhabitants hangout in, or where Rango is forced to draw guns with an opponent in the middle of the town. Scenes like these take me out of the realm of what I love about vintage spaghetti westerns and unfortunately reminded me of other western spoofs, such as Back to the Future III (1990).

I suppose for an animated film these scenes, which I can recall in dozens of films, are necessary to address the audience and say, "Look! You are now transported into the western genre.” Scenes like these only bothered me a bit more in this particular film because from screen right to screen left, Rango is filled with inventive imagery and smartly written adult-like overtones; I wish the originality stayed fresh throughout the lizard’s entire journey.

Johnny Depp leads the cast as the colorful lizard, Rango, which exudes the same weirdness as his portrayal as Gonzo journalist, Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) (in fact, Hunter S. Thompson, the drug-induced writer, has a brief appearance speeding in his vintage red 60s convertible Chevy in the beginning of the film). I loved the awkward look of the slacker-type Rango; it’s much more fun to root for a hero that doesn’t clash with a more friendly, animated type. He’s slightly obnoxious and off-putting, and unlike most heroes in the western tradition, he rambles on with a jocular dialogue.

The strange look of the film and the clever themes of power and corruption could’ve best served for a darker and less comedic experience. The studio is aware that this is a “kids” movie, but I was more moved by the adult concepts than some of the child-like humor. I felt Rango could’ve been more ambitious if it moved into a more thought-provoking direction, alienating a large chunk of its general audience. When animated films decide to truly push the limits of their content, I’ll be the first in line, but for what it is, Rango is a delightful animated concoction, but I felt the filmmakers could’ve pushed the contents’ boundaries a little bit more.

***(out of four stars)