FILM-FORWARD.COMReviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
Directed by: Mark Milgard. Produced by: Molly Mayeux. Written by: Mark Milgard, R.D. Murphy & Robb Williamson. Director of Photography: Tim Orr. Edited by: Amy E. Duddleston. Music by: Robb Williamson. Released by: International Film Circuit. Country of Origin: USA. 93 min. Not Rated. With: Vincent Kartheiser, Taryn Manning, Arliss Howard & Mare Winningham.
As far as his screenplay goes, Mark Milgard's Dandelion could have
ended up on the dusty shelf along with other teen-romance flicks. But
his evocation of a specific place - the waves of windblown, golden wheat
fields in the rural West - luckily engulfs the shortcomings of his
compact, if a little underdeveloped, debut feature film.
Mason Mullich (Vincent Kartheiser), a lonesome Idaho teenager, frolics with
a gun and contemplates death like it's his hobby. But Kartheiser's Mason is
no morose Donnie Darko, instead he is the single beacon of goodness in his
bleak life, having a emotionally stunted, politically-aspiring father (played
with convincing complexity by Arliss Howard) and a submissive,
heavy-drinking mother (Mare Winningham). Conveniently enough, deliverance
comes to the love-starved Mason in a form of a new girl in town, Danny
(Taryn Manning). But just as the plot turns into the stuff of A Walk to
Remember, Milgard sends off Mason to juvenile detention for involvement
in a hit-and-run incident actually committed by his father. But the two
years of imprisonment is promptly skipped over. Milgard's interest lies in
Mason's return to town and his reconciliation with his beleaguered
family as well as with Danny. But Mason is about to learn that life can
challenge his will to transcend the most painful of times.
Kartheiser retains a serene, underplayed performance throughout
that is not at all unaffecting, but it also makes the film's sprawling
vistas all the more necessary to reflect Mason's transforming consciousness.
Influenced by the likes of Andrei Tarkovsky and Terrence Malick,
cinematographer Tim Orr's images, combined with indie-rock songs and the score
by Robb Williamson, allow Milgard to indulge in a series of dream-like
states. Although Kartheiser and Manning convey a fragile and believable
onscreen chemistry, the truth is that all the actors seem more capable than
the flat characterizations of the film. At a time when Prozac is popped like
candy and death may seem the easy way out for troubled youths (as in the
upcoming The Chumscrubber), a teenager putting up a fight against the hardships
of life, however two-dimensional, is a refreshing change. Marie Iida
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