22 Dec The Freaky Prophecies of Southland Tales

In 2001, writer/director Richard Kelly achieved cult status with Donnie Darko, an assured but quirky debut feature exploring deep, existential questions through a lens of 80s nostalgia–and presenting perhaps the greatest meditation on adolescent schizophrenia ever committed to film. Five years later, he followed-up with a more ambitious and even more beguiling sophomore effort, in which forces of totalitarianism and anarchy collide against the backdrop of a near-future world (2008 Los Angeles) seemingly on the brink of collapse. I am speaking, of course, about Southland Tales.

Southland Tales opened in 2007 to very mixed reviews and more than a little confusion, since the version that opened on US screens was significantly shorter than the version that had screened in official competition at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival (alongside Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel, Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, Pedro Almodovar’s Volver, and festival winner Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley). Manolha Dargis of the New York Times called it “A romp… a genre pastiche, a blast of conscience” and she lamented the missing footage. Reading her review it’s clear that she enjoyed the film’s ambition and credits the scathing critical reaction of her peers as an example of the “moribund academicism” at the time that gushed praise upon fastidiously polished films like No Country For Old Men, but severely harshed Southland Tales with the type of ugly hatred generally reserved for a Rob Schneider vehicle.

Those reviews definitely hurt the film’s box office because they spooked Sony into pulling back on the marketing and advertising budget, relegating it to a regional release in the middle of the award-season rush when it should have been a summer blockbuster. It went un-promoted because a writers’ strike blocked talent from appearing on the late night talk show circuit rendering the ensemble cast moot. No wonder it flopped! But the honest-to-goodness truth is that most people who actually see Southland Tales tend to like it because it’s legitimately thought-provoking and fun. It’s epic, but not preachy. It’s a black mirror celebration of the lowest common denominators of junk-pop culture that understands the appeal of the guilty pleasure–be it porn or reality television–and it embraces the robust appetite for conspiracy theories and so-called “alternative facts” that wouldn’t enter the common vernacular for another decade. When watching the film now, there is an almost spooky sense of prophecy to it.

In the counter-factual history of Southland Tales, a nuclear terrorist attack on July 4th, 2005 expands the war on terror leading to an economic collapse of fossil fuel economies that creates an opening for hydro-electric technology (first adopted by the U.S. Military). While dystopian, this near-future version of society looks an awful lot like the current America. The main plot, set against the backdrop of a polarized California in which extremists use viral video to subjugate democracy in an election year, includes suppressed porn star footage as part of an effort to protect a crooked politician’s campaign. If it had also included a pandemic, it could have been the real 2020 instead of a sci-fi version of 2008.

And while all of that can sound a bit heavy, it’s not. The strength of the film is that it is very recognizably a satire, and possibly a brilliant one at that. But the extensive cuts made at the behest of Sony executives following the poor reception at that first screening handicapped the flow of the narrative and gave the film a jumpiness that was best expressed by the characters and not the pacing.

The re-emergence of the full Cannes Cut on home video in an incredible Arrow 2-Disc Special Edition Blu-ray warrants a complete reconsideration, but even the theatrical cut (which is also included in Arrow’s superb 2-disc release) deserves a contextual reassessment. In all honesty, it may still be polarizing; some will continue to dismiss it as a self-indulgent pageant of oddities while others will hail it as the greatest cult movie ever made. It is undoubtedly the highest-budget surrealist film ever released theatrically, but it’s also an incredibly prescient story about returning Iraq War veterans and about the post 9/11 experience. It addresses tragedy fatigue, neofacism, the voluntary surrender of freedom, the calculated suppression of a free press, and the importance of environmental conservation with a perfectly timed series of interstitial subliminal advertisements. It presented an almost clairvoyant vision of omnipresent military apparatus in urban America with a commendable degree of subtlety in the midst of an otherwise over-the-top spectacle of set piece after glorious set piece–many of which showcase the co-opting of public services by private industry and the power yielded by uninformed media personalities whose influence outpaces the news. To a degree Southland Tales is a modern Nostradamus Prophecy that should have been a smash hit back in 2007, and will be exonerated as an all-time classic once people get their hands on this Arrow blu-ray in 2021.

Like American Graffiti or True Romance, it’s now recognized as a film that launched a dozen careers with important early roles for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Justin Timberlake, Mandy Moore, Amy Poehler, Cheri Oteri, and Will Sasso; phenomenal acting from Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott, Jon Lovitz, Miranda Richardson, Wallace Shawn, Nora Dunn, John Larroquett, and Bai Ling; and additional support and cameo appearances by Kevin Smith, Eli Roth, Janeane Garofalo, Curtis Armstrong, Wood Harris, Christopher Lambert, Zelda Rubinstein and Donnie Darko alumni Holmes Osbourne & Beth Grant.

Southland Tales is one of the very few films to use narration correctly and one of the only films to successfully blend period music with new music. While Donnie Darko was grounded in the alt-rock of the 1980s, here the music cues are more versatile. There are familiar elements from Wendy Carlos’ score to A Clockwork Orange and original music by Moby. There are chapter headings named for The Pixies and Jane’s Addiction lyrics have crept into dialogue and inspired a plot point. The Section Quartet and Rebekah Del Rio perform the best rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner since Hendrix, and central to the film’s coda is a Busby Berkeley-esque music video for The Killers’ All These Things That I’ve Done, lip-synched by Justin Timberlake and turned into a phantasmagorical allegory about PTSD. It’s as much Dr. Strangelove meets Repo Man as it is Network meets Showgirls, but only if the former were envisioned by Philip K Dick and the latter witnessed by Hunter S. Thompson. Its footprint can be felt all over streaming services, where the extended narrative format greatly benefits big idea series like Homecoming, Tales from the Loop, Upload, and even  Watchmen.

As we emerge from a global pandemic in an era of tumultuous politics, we can see that this really is the way the world ends, and this Arrow 2-Disc release is the be-all, end-all.

Check out these Bonus Materials:

• New 2K restoration by Arrow Films, approved by director Richard Kelly and director of photography Steven Poster
• High Definition Blu-ray™ (1080p) presentations of both versions of the film: the 145-minute theatrical cut and the 160-minute “Cannes cut”, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006
• Original lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and PCM 2.0 stereo soundtracks
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Audio commentary on the theatrical cut by Richard Kelly
• It’s a Madcap World: The Making of an Unfinished Film, a new in-depth retrospective documentary on the film, featuring contributions by Richard Kelly and members of the original crew
• USIDent TV: Surveilling the Southland, an archival featurette on the making of the film, featuring interviews with the cast and crew
• This is the Way the World Ends, an archival animated short set in the Southland Tales universe
• Theatrical trailer
• Image gallery
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jacey
• Limited edition collector’s booklet featuring new writing by Peter Tonguette and Simon Ward

Click here to pre-order the Arrow Video 2-disc, special edition blu-ray from Amazon.com