AMERIKANA (James Merendino, 2001/2007)
May 19, 2007Playing Shakespeare often lifts up a middling actor’s work to a level of authenticity. On film, this is what happened in the case of Michael Keaton in Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing (1993), where the former Batman is terribly moving and brilliantly funny as Dogberry. However, the situation is hardly universal. In that same film, given the role of a lifetime, that of Pedro, Prince of Aragon, a leader and warrior, the actor who attempted the part is so lacking in talent, imagination, nobility and truthfulness that he brought up his customary low level of accomplishment only a jot. I understand that Denzel Washington is similarly wanting in his stage attempts at Shakespeare.
Filmmakers also can be “brought up.” From what I have read about them, I do not want to see other films by James Merendino; but his invitation from Lars von Trier to make a Dogme 95 film has borne rich fruit. The film called Amerikana, its title a nod to Franz Kafka, was made in 2001; however, the German company that bankrolled it apparently lost it. Luckily, Merendino had kept his own copy, which Olive Films has just released in the States on DVD. It’s an updated variation on Dennis Hopper’s facile Easy Rider (1969), and it’s powerful. Although he claims to have chafed mightily under the artillery of Dogme restrictions,* Merendino admits that Dogme rules “force one to tell the truth.” With a microphone mounted on his perpetually hand-held video camera, Merendino has helped wrought a startlingly fresh and provocative American canvas. I have seen, now, all or nearly all of the Dogme films, and I have liked every one of them. The movement’s masterpiece is Trier’s own The Idiots (1998); but what a vibrant, fascinating thing the whole series is.
Amerikana is a road movie, an hilarious comedy and, finally, an American tragedy.
The two main characters, twentysomethings Peter and Chris (James Duval, terrific), both work at the Stir Crazy coffee shop—a real place in Los Angeles; Peter, a graduate student finishing his dissertation in philosophy** (Merendino himself studied philosophy), whips up the lattes in front and washes dishes in the back; a hippie troubadour with a mandolin, Chris sings for his supper, in addition to performing odd jobs (such as house painting) elsewhere. Peter is caucasian; Chris, Native American. The racial difference is just about the only thing not separating them; Peter is free of racial or ethnic superiority, and in any case Chris carries no historic chip on his shoulder. But whereas Peter is uptight, abstract, cynical and pseudo-intellectual, Chris tries to remain open to experience and take things as they come. Unlike Peter’s thesis, Chris’s songs come directly from experience. It often seems that Peter hates America; he certainly repeatedly takes aim at American capitalism. Chris, on the other hand, professes to be super-patriotic. By degrees, we come to understand that Chris is a far more complex character than the foolish innocent he initially seems, and that his patriotism, founded more in optimism than in experience, also masks notes of distress and irony. It is a form of detachment in a world much more hostile to him than it is to Peter.
After Peter’s Danish girlfriend dumps him, the boys fly to the mid-west to pick up the motorcycle that Chris’s late uncle left to him so that they can ride back to L.A. The “motorcycle” turns out to be a moped, but for financial reasons the boys stick to their original plan. They take in Mt. Rushmore, Las Vegas and other places. The sense of freedom that Peter eventually achieves comes at a terrible price.
Some of what we see is scripted; some is half-documentary, showing ordinary folk interacting with the actors under the assumption that they also are ordinary folk. More often than scripted, scenes are simply outlined in advance.
Several episodes are memorable. While we can see and hear that there’s no basis for his believing this, Peter, vulnerable on the rebound, mistakes a one night stand’s “love talk” for a real commitment. The price of $100 to fix the moped that is quoted to Peter becomes $300 at the point of Chris’s pick-up. It is plain to see that Chris (possibly correctly) believes that the racial disparity between him and his friend accounts for the higher price.
Helping to unify the film is an interesting idea. Various characters fulfill stereotypes that the culture has assigned them—seemingly, at times, at least partially against their will. This is certainly true about the girl in Salt Lake City for whom Peter is prepared to give up everything else and move in with. It turns out that she is a lesbian who, we learn from her lover, has “done this before.” The girl’s assigned role, then, is that of a nymphomaniac. The redneck who assaults “Tonto” nervously says after delivering the blow, “I didn’t mean to hit you so hard,” and runs away; isn’t he supposed to be a brutal bigot? At times it seems that the whole motive of Chris’s life is to try achingly to assimilate. When it most appears that he is trying to please whites, in actuality he is doing his best to fit in.
As I said, this film begins incredibly funny but finds its way to darker, deeper territory.
* A summary of Dogme 95 rules, and of the motive for these rules, appears in my piece on Lone Scherfig’s 2000 film Italian for Beginners, which you will find elsewhere on this site categorized in “film reviews.”
** Thesis title: “Man’s Evolution Towards the Inner Abstract.”
