Logging

Film:  Spring Breakers

A movie?  A music video?  A soft core porn?

Or just more nihilistic hipster darkness masquerading as profundity?

I felt empty after watching this film.  Which is puzzling, after all, I walked home down the piss smelling streets of Hollywood past transsexual prostitutes hanging outside a liquor store / hotel complex on Vine and so the whole thing should speak to me.

That said, I wasn't bored watching the movie.  Despite the repetitiveness, the lack of plotting, and the mind numbing soundtrack, it kept my interest.  And there were moments that were great.  James Franco saves the movie when he comes on screen at the beginning.  It almost fell off a cliff into nothingness.  He ultimately doesn't take the role anywhere - it's what you would call a "one-note" performance - but it sustains the movie for a little while.

There are some terrific images and a few worthy scenes.  But in the end, I'm left feeling nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  Unmoved, uninspired, unhappy.  And a bit puzzled.  Puzzled about what the movie is trying to say about living, about human beings, about the state of cinema in general, what I expect from movies in general.  All of these things end up rattling around in my brain.

Where does this nihilism lead?  Could one interpret this work as a warning shot -- this idea of striving after the permanent Spring Break will lead to death and despair.  I don't know.  I think that's being generous to the film.  I think where it leads, truly, is back into itself and it's own fascination with looking at "good" girls in bikinis gone bad.  The world depicted is not a world for the living - no one is procreating in this world - the world doesn't gone on.  The logic of the world depicted leads to suicide.

Anyhow, I was never a fan of Kids much, I suppose for similar reasons.  It hangs it's hat on "being real" and then fails to show any of the light that accompanies the dark.  This film bears resemblance to the youthful nihilism of last year's Project X -- with more boobs and guns and indie cred -- and the two will play together in 20 years at a New Bev double feature or in cinema classes if they go off the deep end.