Rhinoceros Eyes - Review
[I caught Rhinoceros Eyes way back in 2003 at the Toronto International Film Festival where in the programme notes it was favorably compared to then rising cult film Donnie Darko, and went on to win the Discovery Award for first time filmmaker Aaron Woodley (nephew of none other than Canadian genius David Cronenberg). Aside from a few limited screenings in large American cities and some university campuses in 2004, it has been unfairly buried. I wrote a capsule review when I first starting writing for ScreenAnarchy, but in light of the film finally resurfacing in Canada after a nearly three year delay, and a second look at the picture on the big screen (well as big as the Cumberland Theatre screens get, anyway), well, it is time to remind you kind folk about this underseen gem of a film. Several local ScreenAnarchy folk took advantage of the free passes we handed out to a screening last week. But the picture opens commercially in Toronto this Friday, and the print (or prints) of the film will be drifting across Canada thereafter.]
Rhinoceros Eyes takes place mainly in a labyrinthine, cluttered Toronto prop house filled with neglected objects. The discarded remnants of a thousand plays and films occasionally scuttle together to form a walking, talking, stop-motion entity whose intentions are not always clear.
Director Aaron Woodley's macabre, often surreal fable is at times a story of obsession and fear, oddly mixed with slacker comedy and puppy love, but mostly it is a coming of age story about a young man who is trying to find a grip on reality. If it helps, try to think of blending David Lynch, The Quay Brothers and Terry Gilliam.
When we first meet childlike Chep, he is living in the back of the prop house. He is unable to relate to the cheerful, well meaning doofus types who run the shop. Instead of going out drinking at the bar with them, he either stays in the back moving things around somewhat obsessive-compulsive like, or he ventures out to the local theatre to awkwardly interact with the cute ticket-taker but inevitably sit alone in the theatre watching the soapy period melodrama, The Sweltering Squaddie. He looks in windows at people living their lives on his way home of the theatre (still munching from his bag of popcorn), giving the impression that he cannot really tell the difference between these folks and caricatures up on the screen both of which framed as they are by lit rectangular windows.
Things begin to change when a set decorator for a local movie begins to request specific hard to find props for the film she is working on. Starting with the titular Rhinoceros Eyes, and getting more specific and esoteric from there, she is the sultry femme fatale and Chep is her patsy. When criminal activity begins to be necessary for Chep to meet his clients needs, a private detective begins to sniff (Chep does get the job done, but master criminal he is not!) around the prop house. Upon reading that synopsis it does not really do the movie justice. There are masks and layers beyond this that form a tone of both nostalgia and dread.
Michael Pitt, who plays the often wide eyed and innocent Chep, has been making quite a name for himself from Dawson's Creek in the late 1990s to John Cameron Mitchell's Hedgewick and the Angry Inch, Bertolucci's The Dreamers, Asia Argento's The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, and most recently playing Kurt Cobain in Gus Van Sant's fabulous Last Days. This very unusual performance sets the tone for the entire picture. Especially considering the fact that Pitt spends nearly a third of his screen time in a rubber Tor Johnson mask.
There is a love for cinemas past in this film represented not only by the props, but by many of the characters: The noirish femme fatale, the Colombo-ish detective, the three oddball doofus-types that work the front counter of the prop-shop, the above mentioned Tor Johnson mask which may as well be a character, the confused Chep and the wallflower ticket taker. You have seen these characters before and you haven't. They all conjure up fragments of echoes of past films while simultaneously adding a quirky freshness. The movie-within-the-movie plays like a cross between Cleopatra, Morocco, and the soap opera General Hospital.
Rhinocerous Eyes convincingly walks the line between the disturbingly macabre (take for instance a scene with a dancing old lady a cuckolded husband and prosthetic arm) and farcical comedy. A bar-fight (on Halloween) between the prop-shop owners and a bunch of guys in ape costumes leads to some absolutely fantastic stoner dialogue, which may seem out of place in a picture like this, but really it just adds to already crowded mash of genres.
In many ways Woodley has woven as rich and evocative tapestry as his uncle (Canadian Auteur David Cronenberg) ever has and this is his only his first feature. One that unfortunately took nearly 3 years to make it to Canadian screens. Fortunately though, that is about to change. There was a screening of the film last week in Toronto to generate some word of mouth for the tiny little film which will be opeing across Canadian cities over the next few months before going to DVD in June.
Website
Trailer (Downloadable Quicktime, 16.3 MB)
Interview (with Director Aaron Woodley & Puppet Creator Veronica Verkley)
