TIFF 2011: RESTLESS Review

"Things go a certain way.  Then they don't."  Almost a fitting description of the love story at the heart of Gus Van Sant's Restless.  The story of a suicidal Enoch (Henry Hopper, son of Dennis) who draws himself into chalk-outlines for morbid fun and his pixie-dreamgirl, Annabel (Mia Wasikowska - excellent), who is more serene than manic, luminously dying of brain cancer.  The film charts their budding romance as fall turns to winter in Portland, Oregon and how both of them come to terms with death.  The film might have just a bit too much quirk for the rather heavy subject matter, but for those willing or able to get emotionally invested beyond the directors self-awareness, things can, perhaps, be extrapolated to a universal human condition.  Self denial, or at the very least, a healthy suspension of disbelieve is required of the viewer as much at the characters practice this at every turn.   An awareness of the typical cliches inherent in this type of movie, and how Gus Van Sant both both embraces and subverts them are at times revealing.  They are are onto something even as they often jerk the audiences chain.  If not for the bittersweet blend of earnestness and sly self-awareness, Restless would surely fall into the tar-pit of sugary schmaltz that plagues Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester.   Call this film a curious hybrid of  the directors 'mainstream' mode and more experimental 'Death Trilogy' (Gerry, Elephant, Last Days) mode, although it very much leans towards the former.   

The film settles into the nuts and bolts of the couple's relationship, one founded simultaneously on both love at first sight and and a symbiotic using of each other as private, secret world to avoid the immediate problems of the present.  The film works precisely because of the strong chemistry between Hopper and Wasikowska who look forever young in the pale light of Harris Savides' cinematography.  Both spend a lot of time together skirting around or tentatively embracing Annabel's medical issues, whether it be discussing the nuances of potential funeral refreshments or sizing up the drawers in the Hospital's morgue ("We're just browsing.")  Often they don't talk directly to one another, instead going through an increasingly exasperated Hiroshi.  It all speaks truthfully (if not honestly) to how people use a third party or external object as a coping mechanism for things they are not prepared to deal with directly.  This aspect of the film is so at odds with the rest of the proceedings, I am unclear on whether it is a hindrance or a help.   It would be easier to write the film off completely with out it, but it is impossible to ignore the simple truth once you spot it.

The soundtrack features a number of Sufjan Stevens songs, and it is obvious that the themes and tone of indie wunderkind are the right ones for this material.  Maybe too on the nose, at times it feels if the use of music is correcting a half-decade use of the musician in trailers for mediocre Sundance movies (from Little Miss Sunshine to Shrink) or perhaps just another sign of the middle ground quirk that the film often heads towards.  Restless often hints at truths with the use pat, facile lies, nothing wrong with that, I supposed.  More egregious is the the score which occasionally veers into Carl Orff territory.  Apparently, nobody told Danny Elfman that Hans Zimmer has already ripped off Orff's Gassenhauer (the soundtrack for Badlands) for another movie about doomed lovers, and far better.  If you are going to wade into the Rushmore/Submarine subgenre, music matters, all of it.  

And, thus, I am not sure of what to make of the entire package.  It doesn't quite burn with the fire of youth, even when Hopper shows up with a sledgehammer to redecorate a few headstones.  Instead, things settle on the thin line between confusion and serenity.   A second viewing might reveal whether the acceptance of mortality with the line, "And if it isn't fine, it will still be fine," is revelatory or simply bathos.  On a long enough timeline, everyone has a life expectancy of zero.  Suffice it to say that Restless is a simultaneously satisfying and frustrating experience that leaves me in a rare noncommittal state towards Gus Van Sant, a director who typically gets a strong reaction one way or another.