Things Behind the Sun video
Added 5/22/2009
This is a movie I would recommend to all women, especially young women who need to know how men really are. It is a movie written by women, for women, and it's about rape.
If any woman is wondering why she does things she's not proud of, please watch this movie.
It changed my life.
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The best way to kill a technically well made film is through a bad screenplay. Exhibit 1A: filmmaker Allison Anders' 2003 Showtime film Things Behind The Sun. Ostensibly based upon Anders' real life `trauma' of being raped as a child, the film wallows in every manner of cliché on the subject of victimhood imaginable, as well as wasting some fine performances, save that of the ever PC and increasingly hyperbolic Don Cheadle, whose performance here presages his terrible role in last year's Oscar-winning Crash.
Yet, for all the potential this film has- and which a better and/or more objective director may have well exploited, it bogs down in the sort of Feminist PC clichés that made Monster such a bad film. The men are either unrepentant beasts- like Dan and his rapist pals, or wimpy excuses for men- like Owen and Chuck, straight out of the Alice Walker school of misandry. The film even ends with a trite dedication to Anders' long dead grandmother, described as a rape `survivor,' not `victim.'
Yet, despite this seeming sensitivity, instead of showing how the vast majority of rape victims actually do adjust, mature, and cope with their violation, then move on, Anders indulges the Hollywood cliché of the eternal victim who cannot move on. This is, however, in keeping with the film's immature schizophrenic attitudes toward sex and psychology. As example, it also has too many pointless T&A scenes of sex, yet no male genitalia. Yes, we know Owen is impotent, so why do we need to see him try banging two different women, and failing? That such gratuitous, and sexist, sex is in this film is startling since the rest of the film is so PC. And, as a whole, the film is far too long at two full hours, and could lose much of its first forty minutes by just getting Owen back to Florida, and cutting the scenes of him shooting blanks. Yet, if that were not enough, there is the bizarre threesome scene with Sherry and two of her groupies, climaxing to furious rock music- an obvious steal from the famous drug scene of Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now, to the music of The Doors' The End. Even worse, though, is the whole device of the flashbacks tells too much of the story, and lessens the impact of Owens' telegraphed guilt, as well the impact of the film.
Things Behind The Sun is, ultimately, an example of the old good intentions lead to....trope, and fails as a work of art, despite glimmers of breaking through its self-imposed political strictures. In that way it recapitulates its main characters' failures to move beyond themselves. If only such a trope had been ameliorative. Ah, well, there's always tomorrow, Allison.
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Underrated!
Added 5/20/2007
I usually always see anything that stars the slightly trashy-for-some-reason-always-sexy Rosanna Arquette. It's a fetish and I'm getting help for it. And Don Cheadle has methodically established himself as a bankable Hollywood talent. I also love the earnestness of independent films. Although not many people have seen this film, it showcases a performance from Don Cheadle that could've served as an aggregate preview of his future work. I must admit though, I'm not quite yet a Gabriel Mann fan. I think he sometimes comes off as a skinny, spaced-out younger version of James Spader. For those of you who don't appreciate independent films, you may not enjoy this movie, because it does take a while to come together. But with a little patience this film delivers. This film also shows a bit of courage, as it delves into some of the rarely talked about fallout only rape victims can identify with; namely, the subsequent preferring or needing of abusive situations for sexual satisfaction and the revolving door of guilt that scenario consequently opens. Although Things Behind the Sun is predictable in spots, the strength and depth with which the characters are explored makes this film an underrated winner.
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Mixed feelings
Added 1/23/2007
This isn't an easy film to watch, but I'm glad I did. Don Cheadle plays Chuck, one of the most understanding boyfriends on earth. It's his character that I had the most questions about after finishing the film -- questions the more I pondered, the more they helped. Gabriel Mann plays Owen, a rock journalist doing a piece on Chuck's songwriter girlfriend, Sherry, who has a hit song about her traumatic past, which stirs up memories of Owen's own traumatic past. Owen decides to turn the piece into an "I'll get 'em for you" story on the boys that hurt her, and includes himself for good measure.
This is Allison Anders most personal film, and probably her strongest. A lot of times I wish these films dealing with abuse would give more backstory on the assailants, not to justify the behavior, but to attempt to understand the causes. Without being shown any hope of redemption, I suspect many abusers are more likely to keep up the bad behavior; and without being shown the causes, many potential abusers may miss the warning signs. Then again, you could just label them all evil and wipe them off the face of the earth to make room for more strip clubs and shopping malls.
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Quirky and likable.
Added 12/13/2006
Things Behind the Sun (Allison Anders, 2001)
When you make a movie like this-- a deeply personal autobiographical flick whose main characters are played by relative unknowns, but whom you've surrounded with top-flight actors who are consistently underrated by Hollywood-- you're bound to make either a film that will eventually be called one of the greatest ever made or a piece of utter crap. There's really no middle ground-- or at least, there wasn't before. Along comes Allison Anders and changes all that. Things Behind the Sun is not the kind of deathless filmmaking we've all been aware, in the back of our heads, she's capable of since we all saw Four Rooms. But it's certainly not bad, not bad at all. It's a little manipulative, kind of cheesy in spots, but if you're aware that this is autobiography, you can't not watch this movie and keep thinking to yourself "this could have been so much worse than it is."
Sherry McGrale (Deadwood beauty Kim Dickens) is an up-and-coming singer-songwriter in Florida with a past so ugly she's repressed it, but everyone around her knows something very bad happened; she shows up drunk on the lawn of the same house three years running. Chuck (Don Cheadle), her manager, tries to get her through and best she can and keep her from derailing her career. An intern at a music magazine in LA gets ahold of one of the group's demos shortly after and plays it for her boyfriend Owen (Dominion's Gabriel Mann, doing his best James Spader impersonation), a writer at the magazine, who is stunned by it, and campaigns stridently for the magazine to go interview the young singer. Owen, of course, has a catch-- he, and his older brother Dan (Killing Zoe's Eric Stoltz), are directly involved in the traumatic events in Sherry's past.
It's the kind of coincidence that simply doesn't fly in fiction, which is likely the main reason that the movie's publicity (and the DVD's jacket copy) goes to such lengths to impress upon potential viewers that, yes, it really did happen this way. And once you swallow the mother of all coincidences, Things Behind the Sun becomes an intriguing movie about memory, guilt, and forgiveness, brave enough to ask the questions and never provide satisfactory answers for them. Despite her closeness to the material, Anders takes almost a hands-off approach to directing-- put the actors in front of the camera and let them do their thing. You need a strong stable of actors for that, and Anders has them. Just to back things up, her minor characters read like a who's-who of the best B-list talent Hollywood has to offer-- Elizabeth Pena, CCH Pounder, Patsy Kensit, Rosanna Arquette, Alison Folland, and a number of others. (It helps to have your main character's backing band made up of members of Redd Kross and Dinosaur Jr., as well.)
Anders has put together quite a good little film here, one that has been unjustly overlooked. Do yourself a favor and rediscover it. *** ½
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