SEPTIEN
Written & Directed by Michael Tully
Produced by Brooke Bernard, Ryan Zacarias & Brent Stewart
Released by Sundance Selects
USA. 79 min. Not Rated
With Robert Longstreet, Onur Tukel, Jim Willingham, Mark Darby Robinson, Rachel Korine & John Maringouin
 

Describing this Sundance 2011 premiere, simultaneously available on video on demand,  as “David Lynch meets Harmony Korine starring Richie Tenenbaum” won’t quite suffice, so try to picture this: a thickly bearded Cornelius Rawlings (played by the writer/director Michael Tully), closely resembling The Royal Tenenbaums’ forlorn middle child in shades and a hooded gym suit, returns home to his brothers after going missing for two decades. In the years since their parents’ death, the men have isolated themselves on their now-defunct farm somewhere in the American Southeast, where their unique eccentricities are allowed to cultivate. Ezra (co-writer Robert Longstreet) is the nurturing yet stern pseudo-matriarch who cooks, cleans, and cross-dresses. Amos (co-writer Onur Tukel), a cynical painter, spends all his time in the barn working on disturbing renditions of football players being brutally murdered in gruesome ways, most of them with their penises hanging out. When the boys’ dreaded high school football coach, now a plumber hailing as Red “Rooster” Rippington (Mark Darby Robinson), appears at the house to do some work on a drain, it takes the black magic of a mysterious, wandering leather-clad preacher (John Maringouin) to focus their deep seated rage into the healing power they’ve been looking for all along.

If ever a film blended genres, this is a prime example. It’s a little spooky, yet at times genuinely heartfelt and realistic despite the weird, unfamiliar characters. It’s not exactly a comedy, but it has elements of farce and is often hilarious in a non-sequitur David Lynch way. Cornelius, for instance, was a star athlete in high school and now earns the money that he’ll spend on beer and drugs by hustling locals at one-on-one sports contests, starting with a tennis match. By the end of the film, we find him wagering against a wealthy golfer on how many crushed beer cans they can each land in a nearby trash can.

The humor, though, works in different ways. On the one hand, it certainly gives the film levity and keeps it engaging, but the danger is when the more complex sequences are allowed less room for interpretation and become merely part of a joke. So many key moments, especially during the chaotic black magic climax, are more silly than revealing. It’s an important point that Ezra commands Amos to give up his seat at the kitchen table when a visitor arrives, but it plays as a gag. Likewise, when the boys reach an emotional resolution by kicking field goals in the clearing behind the house, those of us in the audience who were actually digging the drama are left on the bench.

The influence of fellow Tennessean Harmony Korine is palpable. His wife Rachel Korine plays Savannah, the Rooster’s beautiful young sidekick, and another fellow collaborator on Korine’s Trash Humpers, Brian Kotzur, makes a quick appearance during a short scene at a gas station. The fatalistic worldview is similar as well as the thorough use of folksy (read: lowbrow) Americana—though this is certainly not limited to Korine’s work. A dilapidated farmhouse and acoustic folk songs fit right in with many films as of late. (For the record, the songs in Septien, several composed by the actors themselves, are excellent and far better than the primal chants that appear in Korine’s films.) There’s something both comfortable and hip about this homey imagery that easily lends itself to developing rich, complex themes.

As weird and scatterbrained as this film is, though, there’s something very satisfying about this particular scenario. The three brothers are each repressing something, and as I’ve said, the drama will begin to pull you in. Ezra and Amos seem willing to confront the darker sides of their own personalities, yet Cornelius remains the Richie Tenenbaum, not only in appearance but in psychological pain as well. He shies from every difficult emotional moment until, with Amos’s help, the seams begin to split. There’s a touching story about a threesome of wounded men here, though it’s hard to tell how seriously we’re supposed to take it. Michael Lee
January 25, 2011