Arizona Dream

1992 movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A turtle and/or a fish have a dream about people.

When I last mentioned Emir Kusturica on this blog, it was when writing about Underground, a movie that I loved. Here, Kusturica got a chance to direct a Hollywood movie with a Hollywood budget and Hollywood stars. I mean, here's Johnny Depp post-Scissorhands and ready to explode with all those mid-90's roles. Here's Faye Dunaway, stunning at 50-something. And here's Jerry Lewis, taking a break from telethoning to make some funny faces and noises.

I'm sure whatever production company gave Kusturica this money were thrilled with the results--a surreal comedy/drama with a baffling narrative and seemingly no interest in saying much of anything. I don't believe he's worked in Hollywood again, but I'm not sure if he's been banned from Southern California or anything. He's just the type of guy with the type of ideas that clash with what Hollywood usually offers.

I just think this movie, regardless of whether or not it means anything or really makes that much sense, just works. As any reader of this blog knows, I like my avant-garde with a generous helping of humor. You have to appreciate how assured the direction is. Add Kusturica to that list of directors who are capable of creating dreams on film, and with pink balloons over the Yukon wilderness or that fish undulating through the Arizona dry air or a shot of a dog in a movie theater, the imagery is great. There's an attention to detail here that I like a lot here, and you really want to pay attention because you assume there's symbolism at play. Eventually, you kind of decide that this is more like the work of a lunatic with a cast of lunatics playing lunatics and that if you're searching for symbolism, you might be trying to hard. As Gallo's character says here--"Bullshit artist, artist, whatever. Art is art."

A lot of why this works is its unpredictability. The dialogue's offbeat and consistently humorous, and there are all kinds of visual gags--pig snoring, a suicide attempt featuring pantyhose that is a beautiful slice of black comedy. The movie's so funny that you don't even end up thinking the movie's too long even though the movie is probably too long. But it's really that unpredictability that keeps this thing driving forward. You just never really know what's going to happen next. Jerry Lewis might start swinging a broom around in a car graveyard again. Depp, who is mostly a straight man in this one, might act like a rooster as some sort of fowl foreplay. Vincent Gallo might reenact scenes from North By Northwest or The Wizard of Oz. Throw in rainy pinata beating, lots of accordion, chair dancing, flying machines, guns, turtles, faux-Eskimo language, and anything else that Kusturica can think of, and you've got yourself a movie that is undeniably a mess. But it's a mess that more adventurous cinephiles might get a kick out of and even, if they really stretch things, learn from.

Depp's character provides this pseudo-philosophical narration. At one point, he says, "Sometimes you have to crash and hit your head on a tree to know what to do and realize that everything is meaningless." I'm not sure if I hit my head on a tree while watching this movie, but it might be the kind of thing that can help.

The score is provided by Kusturica-regular Goran Bregovic, accordion-heavy gypsy funk that blends with the Django Reinhardt tracks the characters listen and sometimes dance to or the weird Iggy Pop songs that are in this.

Anyway, I'm probably doing a terrible job of selling this movie, but I really did love it. I liked the performances--Depp as the straight man, Jerry Lewis who is doing exactly what you'd expect Jerry Lewis to be doing, Faye Dunaway who looks so good and plays this childish middle-aged mood-swingy part terrifically, a tragic Lilli Taylor, a controlled but still sort-of unhinged Vincent Gallo. They're characters who just shouldn't have been left in the same movie together, but Kusturica throws them all into the pot, stirs it up, sprinkles in some of that gypsy music and adds a pinch or two of surrealism, and then lets the thing simmer.