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August 19, 2006
Suicide as Snake Oil: The Strange Case of 2:37
I watch hundreds of films a year, but very few have boiled my blood so hotly as current Australian supposed critical darling 2:37. The product of 22 year-old wunderkind Murali K. Thalluri, the film is supposedly one of the best films to come out of the country this year. It screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes--to ovations--and has been selected in the Toronto International Film Festival. The local distributors are hyping both its director and his story, seductive as they are, and the film is being sold as an important piece of Australian art that has a vital message for teenagers everywhere. A pity that the film is a cynical, almost dangerous exercise in exploitation that risks becoming, when all eventually outs, the poster-child for all that is wrong with our film industry, beyond the usual scapegoats of funding bodies (who had no role in this film other than not funding it).
My problems with the film are only partly aesthetic. Firstly, it so shamelessly rips off Gus Van Sant's Elephant that it is tough to believe so few critics have had the guts to call it on its plagiarism. The issue has been talked around. It's similar, they say. Very similar. Almost too similar. But... Say it! He has taken entire shots from the film. Entire extended sequences. Not in a "Brian de Palma does the Odessa Steps" tribute way, either. It's plagiarism, pure and simple. He's even hired van Sant's sound designer from Elephant to make it just exactly, precisely identical. It amazes me that it was screened at Cannes so soon after Elephant took the Palmes D'Or. David Stratton's review in The Australian this morning struggles to find a single good thing to say about the film, yet gives it three stars. I call this the Australian Film Prop Up. It is one of the many reasons our film industry is sick to its core.
And the genius of this plagiarism? It has allowed a snake oil salesman to pass himself off as a talented director by stealing somebody else's visual invention. I've been unable to say what I've truly felt about this film outside of my circle of friends, but now that it's out there in the media and I can use the word "alleged", I can repeat what my instincts told me when I met the man last week. It is alleged in today's Australian that the suicide of his friend to which he alludes may not have happened. Thalluri has claimed repeatedly that he made this film to save his own life, to deal with the suicide of his friend. When I heard him say this, to my face, it shocked me how little heart seemed to be in the words. It felt like a sales pitch.
I asked him: how, in your early twenties, did you get to the stage of making a film? And he told me an anecdote, about a book that provided inspiration in getting ahead. Catch Me If You Can. The autobiography of Frank W. Abagnale. You know the guy -- possibly the greatest conman of the last fifty years. Took everybody for a ride by posing as a pilot, a doctor, whatever he felt like. Spielberg made the film. Thalluri admitted posing as a qualified actor and using a faked certificate to teach an acting course, where he scooped up the talent for his film. He said this, and something clicked. It all made sense, and I wondered about the chutzpah of someone admitting their inspiration came from a con man. Was the industry happily jumping on Thalluri's grand, classic confidence trick? Could he be that confident in his plan? Or was I reading it all wrong?
The film itself reads like the experience of high school written by somebody who never had any real experience in high school. The parade of characters--an overachieving student with parents who pressure him, a princess hiding her bulimia, a jock struggling with his secret sexuality, a stoner, a fat freak and a pregnant girl--seem as though they were purchased from the heavily-stocked discount racks at 2D High School Characters R Us. Not a single original emotion or sentiment is expressed from any of them, yet Thalluri's script has them unimaginatively plodding towards an inevitable suicide without revealing anything surprising. Essentially the film is a twisted whodunit--somebody will die, but we don't know who. By the time the film has the cojones to hit you in the face with a Usual Suspects ending (presuming you didn't notice the blatant clues as to the real death, obvious to anybody with the slightest bit of filmwatching experience), it's all so absurdly insulting that you just don't care anymore. Extended gratuitous rape and suicide scenes only make things worse, manipulating the audience (and throwing Requiem behind the blood) so they think they've felt something real. And the suicide depiction is perhaps the most irresponsible, immature aspect of the film, showing in lurid, fascinated detail the precise method to slash one's wrists. Most teen wrist-slash suicides fail because they don't know how to do it. Though I'm rarely one to join on the bandwagon of those who say that depictions of rape/abuse/drug use/murder/cannibalism/speeding in films encourage people to act out same in real life (still remembering those absurd warnings after watching Superman on television to not go jumping off buildings, chill'un), something in the suicide scene--I can't say what for sure with all the lurid reds saturating the screen--crossed a line I never knew I had drawn.
For an example of the disconnect between critics and audiences, this page at YourMovies.com.au provides a brilliant illustration -- compare and contrast the critic's view to audience reaction.
I asked him about Elephant, about the (cough) striking similarities. He told me that it was an honour to be mentioned in the same breath as van Sant. Had I any guts, I would have pointed out that I wasn't saying it as a compliment. But live radio sometimes doesn't give you the opportunity to go with your gut. He told me that Gus van Sant actually called him to say that he very much liked the film. This seemed convincing for about the time it took for the interview to finish and him to leave the room. Shortly thereafter, I was visited by l'esprit d'escalier, who told me I may well have been fleeced. I do not for a moment believe that van Sant called Thalluri. Had I followed my gut, I would have put the guy on the rails, demanded details of this phone call and how and when it happened. But I did not. I'm happy to be wrong, but I'm wondering if there's a way the internet can tell us--Gus, have you ever spoken to Murali?
Everything about this film is slowly unravelling. Claims of a 17-minute ovation at Cannes are now looking to be fabrications, and the only foreign review of any substance I can find is a slamming in Variety. This is also the only foreign review quoted on the film's publicity material, using the old trick (to which I myself have fallen victim in the past) of taking the one positive, constructive sentence from an otherwise damning review and putting it on the poster.
I'd love to be wrong about Thalluri. I really would. Perhaps he's just a guy with a gift for getting things done, who really did go through his friend's suicide and his own failed attempt, made a terrible, exploitative film to deal with it, and lucked onto some good reviews, riding on the back of the Australian press's inability to say what it really means about Australian films (or in this case to remember what high school felt like). I really hope that's the case. If it is - Murali, I will apologise in full and in public and retract my suspicions (but not my opinion of your film). And I hope the big Hollywood film you've signed a deal for that you couldn't say anything about is not another fiction.
Something has been screaming to me that there is something else at play in this story. The story being sold was too seductive, too easy to distil into soundbites. "This film saved my life", he says, over and over. As do the distributors. And the critics. And the cinemas. It feels like the machinery of a long, and potentially spectacular, con. I knew a journalist with more guts than I would finally ask him the question I could not, the one that perhaps may have been considered a shield for our director. How can you stare a man in the face and say to him, as he confesses his friend's suicide and how it tore him apart, "prove it"?
One hopes Thalluri is not the film industry's Demidenko or LeRoy, but if he is, then a few old men will rightly have their feathers ruffled and will learn an important lesson: if it looks like shit, and if it smells like shit, the fact that it's Australian shit doesn't mean you need to shovel it.
Technorati Tags: 2:37, film, thalluri
Posted by patrick at August 19, 2006 2:32 PM
Comments
Hi Patrick,
I have just seen 2:37, like you, I have a job that requires that I see films that I might not otherwise choose to watch. Were this not the controversy du jour among film-heads, then I would have gladly avoided this.
Not because it was Australian and not because it already stank of hype, but because the subject matter seemed uninteresting to someone so far outside of the film's demographic as myself.
This turned out to be the case. Shorn of the controversy - or even the fact that this blatantly rips off ELEPHANT (It is plagiarised, you are 100% correct) - this film is simply not very well-written. It is slack and episodic.
Episodic is fine, if those episodes have insight and keep us engaged in the stories of the characters. As you have pointed out, these characters are sterotypes. They ring about as true as the stereotypes in THE BREAKFAST CLUB
In the case of 2:37, Thalluri was unable to plagiarise the depth of insight that a filmmaker of Gus Van Sant's experience brought to ELEPHANT. Which is why his film is lazy and repetitive.
But I'm not just abusing the guy, I think this is precisely the kind of thing most 22 year old filmmakers do. They borrow ideas and techniques from the filmmakers who influence them, while they get their craft skills up to a professional level.
Most filmmakers under the age of 25 are likely to fall into this trap because they are shaping their own identities.
Thalluri however has tried to avoid accusations of plagiarism by playing the 'versimillitude card', ie - It all happened to me and my friends, so you have no right to question the TRUTH of my STORY.
However, I think you are being a little harsh on yourself and your fellow journalists. The Literary, Art and Cinema Worlds are largely peopled by middle-class types (like myself) who are usually too polite to call someone on their bullshit, to their face.
This fear is based on the very reasonable thought that if one is wrong, then one will look like a fool or a completely thoughtless, self-agrandising prick.
The middle-class thing really is part of the picture, too. This is how JT Leroy got away with his/her hoax. If you want to hoax the Art media, then make the details a little (or a lot) down and dirty, outside of the experience of most of your potential critics, and then their innate politeness (or respect for plurality/otherness) will kick in.
Who am I to say to someone, "Have you really been stabbed in the eye, f***ker?"
The whistle has been blown, let's hope people are listening.
Regards,
PJK
Posted by: Phil Jeng Kane at August 20, 2006 6:30 PM
wow, patty – you sound fired up on this... i'm fascinated. on what you're saying, i want to avoid it like the plague. then again, feeling angry is a legitimate emotion to walk from a cinema with, directorial intentions aside.
i would have thought, though (assuming that my faith in your judgement means your suspicions are true; naked emperor winding up the critical community for personal gain) that a *really* savvy film-maker would be punching holes in the post-modern conceit... (death of the author; reader-centric appraisals of textuality) rather than perpetuating it.
i think there's some detective work to be done in this; i eagerly await your findings.
r
ps. let me know off-line your thoughts on brick. oh, and if you want to 'cleanse your palate' so to speak... there's always SNAKES ON A [MOTHERFUCKIN'] PLANE!. oh, yeah... : )
Posted by: reuben at August 21, 2006 5:34 PM
Jeeee-zussss. I'm glad I haven't seen the film and won't unless I can get in for free.
Maybe at the AFIs where it'll only cost me two bucks fifty.
I reckon this guy should get together with Greg McLean. They should call a spade a spade and do a snuff movie together. Maybe blame their mothers for the death and film them being hauled in by the police.
"Thank you for this award. Ever since the age of three I knew I was destined for fame. I'd like to thank my mother . . ."
What the hell happened to responsibility. Or is this a result of the "I don't love you, but here's fifty bucks!" generation?
I feel sick.
. . . And very "responsible".
Posted by: Li'l Eddie Lunch at August 21, 2006 5:38 PM
Mostly I agree, except I'm a mental health nurse and in NO WAY is the suicide a realistic depiction of wrist-slashing. since when do wrists explode like that???
Posted by: Lee at August 23, 2006 7:25 PM
Fair point Lee -- it did kinda look like she'd punctured a high pressure squib inside a rubber arm, and 'twas a little silly. But I guess i mean the method of cut, as opposed to its bloody aftermath. But then, never having slashed my wrists nor having seen the _act_ of it happening (only its horrid aftermath rushing mistakes to hospitals), I'm only presuming it's accurate.
Posted by: Patrick Pittman 
at August 23, 2006 7:46 PM
