Wristcutters: A Love Story
Making a film about suicide may be considered artistic suicide, especially a film that is aimed at a relatively mainstream audience. Wristcutters isn't a documentary or one of those incomprehensible arthouse movies that never makes it beyond the festival circuit. Quite the opposite. It is a love story and a road movie, with moments of subtle humour.
After taking his own life with razor blades across the wrists, lovelorn Zia (Patrick Fugit - Almost Famous) finds himself in a bland, nowhere world inhabited by other suicides, working in a pizzeria called Kamikaze Pizza. Here he befriends a Russian rock star, Eugene, who killed himself by pouring beer into his electric guitar while on stage. Zia is having trouble adjusting to his new "life", where no one smiles and the jukeboxes only play music by people who killed themselves, until he hears that the girl who drove him over the brink had also killed herself and was in the same netherworld. So he convinces Eugene to take his beat up car and go with him in search of his lost love. On the way they pick up a hitchhiker called Mikal (Shannyn Sossamon - Rules of Attraction, A Knight's Tale), who wants to talk to the "people in charge" because she believes she is there by mistake.
After several adventures they stumble across Kneller (Tom Waits) who runs a sort of refuge where good things happen. Here he discovers the whereabouts of his ex, who is with the self proclaimed Messiah King, played by Will Arnett (Gob from the excellent TV sit-com Arrested Development). When Zia finally catches up with his ex he realises that maybe it isn't her he loves now.
Director Goran Dikic has created a desolate world that is dirty, barren and washed out, which is accentuated by the films cinematography and colour grading. Although it is a joyless world of menial jobs and bad food, it is a contrast to the usual concept of the purgatory suicides are sent to in that it is identical to a world thousands of the living already inhabit, whether it is Russia or the American mid west. While the film is not condoning suicide it is showing that many people already lead lives of the dead.
It is a positive film about how love can conquer all, and it does it without having to resort to the usual saccharine sweetness that plagues most rom-coms. Not that this could really be classified as a typical rom-com. It does have lots of moments of gentle dark humour, like the black hole in Eugene's car, but it is not a laugh-out-loud comedy, which seems rather fitting giving the film's conceit. And it does have a happy ending.
This is an ideal film for confessed unromantics to take their more romantically inclined partners to see, without blowing their credibility.
Wristcutters is showing at Cameo 1, Edinburgh
Sunday 20 at 22:00
Monday 21 at 17:30
After taking his own life with razor blades across the wrists, lovelorn Zia (Patrick Fugit - Almost Famous) finds himself in a bland, nowhere world inhabited by other suicides, working in a pizzeria called Kamikaze Pizza. Here he befriends a Russian rock star, Eugene, who killed himself by pouring beer into his electric guitar while on stage. Zia is having trouble adjusting to his new "life", where no one smiles and the jukeboxes only play music by people who killed themselves, until he hears that the girl who drove him over the brink had also killed herself and was in the same netherworld. So he convinces Eugene to take his beat up car and go with him in search of his lost love. On the way they pick up a hitchhiker called Mikal (Shannyn Sossamon - Rules of Attraction, A Knight's Tale), who wants to talk to the "people in charge" because she believes she is there by mistake.
After several adventures they stumble across Kneller (Tom Waits) who runs a sort of refuge where good things happen. Here he discovers the whereabouts of his ex, who is with the self proclaimed Messiah King, played by Will Arnett (Gob from the excellent TV sit-com Arrested Development). When Zia finally catches up with his ex he realises that maybe it isn't her he loves now.
Director Goran Dikic has created a desolate world that is dirty, barren and washed out, which is accentuated by the films cinematography and colour grading. Although it is a joyless world of menial jobs and bad food, it is a contrast to the usual concept of the purgatory suicides are sent to in that it is identical to a world thousands of the living already inhabit, whether it is Russia or the American mid west. While the film is not condoning suicide it is showing that many people already lead lives of the dead.
It is a positive film about how love can conquer all, and it does it without having to resort to the usual saccharine sweetness that plagues most rom-coms. Not that this could really be classified as a typical rom-com. It does have lots of moments of gentle dark humour, like the black hole in Eugene's car, but it is not a laugh-out-loud comedy, which seems rather fitting giving the film's conceit. And it does have a happy ending.
This is an ideal film for confessed unromantics to take their more romantically inclined partners to see, without blowing their credibility.
Wristcutters is showing at Cameo 1, Edinburgh
Sunday 20 at 22:00
Monday 21 at 17:30
posted by Chris Patmore at 2:58 pm
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