Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Sometimes I’m in the mood for gloomy. I don’t want some happy sappy comedy to lift my spirits; I want something tragic in which to wallow for a couple of hours. And make no mistake; there is no shortage of cinematic gloom from which to choose. Sometimes, though, I find myself blindsided by the gloom – watching a movie that is gloomier than I could have possibly bargained for. Urbania is exactly that kind of movie. Depressing, gritty, sad and almost unbearably gloomy, it still manages to somehow emerge as almost triumphant. Quite a trick, that.

Urbania is based on the play Urban Folk Tales by Daniel Reitz (who also co-wrote the screenplay with director Jon Shear). The film opens with one of the classic urban legends. Man picks up beautiful woman on the street (or does she pick him up?). They retire to her room for an afternoon of sweaty sex, only to end in the man shivering in an ice filled bathtub and missing a kidney. Yep, the kidney-napper, the granddaddy of all urban legends. This scene isn’t played as realism, but as surreal filler, atmosphere maybe, to set the stage for the appearance of a number of urban legends that pop up throughout the film in one way or another.

The film itself begins when we meet Charlie (Dan Futterman). Charlie, at this point, is mostly aimless. He stops to have a word with the homeless man outside his building, gets hit up by a panhandler who spins yet another tale about how he was robbed in the bathroom. He wanders. During his rambling, he spots a man. He’s completely mesmerized by this man, and we see, in flashback, their first encounter outside a party. Charlie meets the gaze of this man as he walks home with his lover after a party. The man looks dangerous, mysterious, and Charlie halts dead in his tracks when he spots him again. Charlie pursues the man, asking about him at a local bar. While he waits for his mystery man to show up, Charlie has himself quite a night.

It’s clear by this time that Charlie has some sort of inner torment that is eating him alive. He visits an old friend, having multiple flashbacks of an earlier, happier time. His visit is strained, filled with pregnant pauses and stilted conversation while a white elephant that we don’t yet understand perches in the center of the room. Charlie and his friend (played by Alan Cumming) try, but they can’t be what they were. Too much has happened to go back to that simpler time. We start to get some idea of what that time was like, but not what changed it all.

Charlie proceeds to be as self destructive as is humanly possible. Taking on a one night stand with a soap opera actor, he becomes belligerent and hostile when the man is less than perfect. He repeats his performance as asshole of the year with his upstairs neighbor who he bumps into in a bar. By embarrassing and enraging the man, Charlie continues his march down Self Loathing Lane and turns directly onto Misanthropic Boulevard.

Only when Charlie finds his mystery man do we begin to have some inkling as to what the demons are that he fights every day. As his encounter with the man proceeds, we learn more of Charlie’s haunted past, flashing between the past, the present and the imaginary. A potentially confusing filmmaking choice, the muddled sequencing works well as a mirror of Charlie’s own confusion and misery. What transpires from here on out is as heartbreaking as it gets.

I’ve seemingly given you quite a bit of plot, here. That’s primarily because this is a complicated film. The basics of the plot as I’ve outlined them are only the skeleton around which the nuance of the film plays out. This is a story of tragedy, confusion, grief, loneliness and guilt. Charlie is a character that is so multifaceted that we don’t know what to think of him from one minute to the next. We don’t have a lot of insight into what he’s thinking most of the time, so we see him as the outside world sees him. It isn’t until the ending of the film that we see past the hurt into the man. A character with this kind of depth is a rare thing, indeed. He’s inconsistent, frustrating and decidedly human. In giving us Charlie as a protagonist, Reitz and Shear challenge us to look at how people really are, in all their nasty, gloomy, brilliant glory, and accept that as heroic. There is no cardboard “good guy” in Charlie, we take him complete with glaring flaws or are forced to reject those things we’re accustomed to seeing as “likable”. He’s like everyone; you take the bad with the good. And as he’s written, we waver as to which we’ll choose – do we want to take the oozing nastiness and dig for something better or do we want to chuck out this character as protagonist and hope he gets what he seems to deserve? The movie gives us a lot of time to decide. The character of Charlie – his past, his motives, his demons – doesn’t come into clear focus for a long while.

Dan Futterman pulls out a brilliant performance as Charlie. Likable, a bastard, confused, a hopeless wreck of a man with some sort of death wish of a mission, Charlie is nothing if not contradictory and complicated. Futterman never breaks character, giving us the good and bad of Charlie with equal dedication. He doesn’t pull back when the character is ugly and mean, nor does he sugar coat things when Charlie shows a flash of humanity. The revelations, as they come, are surprising, heartbreaking and fill in so many blanks as to be ultimately satisfying albeit terribly sad. Futterman rolls with the character, in the end creating our human, flawed and remarkably relatable Charlie.

Another tremendously interesting aspect to the film is the placement of the urban legends throughout. Presented as delusion, fantasy or just stupid stories, it’s terribly confusing until you realize where the film is taking you. All these ridiculous legends, the ones we’ve heard dozens of times, so ludicrous, so unbelievable. Except that Charlie is living one. They are unbelievable, yes. But somewhere, within these stories, is a grain of truth, a seed of someone’s pain. Charlie’s pain. Urban legends surround him, engulf him. He is one.

The presentation here is very, very gritty and hyper-realistic. Perhaps slightly more realistic than some people are going to be up for. There are scenes of masturbation; one night stands gone bad, violence and street life that are really not for the squeamish. But if you can get past those things, the story of Charlie is what resonates throughout. His life is actually this gritty and the film doesn’t shy away from showing that. While it might turn off some viewers, it adds to the strength of the film as a whole. To back off on these elements would be to soften the story, and this isn’t a story that was made to be soft or comfortable. Even the music (composed by Mark Anthony Thompson) is minimal and hard edged. Not harsh, but not twinklingly melodic. It’s a nice, simple, moody accompaniment to the story, and fits in beautifully.

In all, Urbania is not a popcorn movie. It’s not a rainy day lift your spirits movie. But it is indeed a gripping look at one man and his struggle to find some peace in a world gone terribly wrong. Dan Futterman carries the film as Charlie, and does so beautifully, giving the character as much depth as I’ve seen in a long while. From one moment to the next we don’t really know if he’s a nice man, a creep or something else altogether. An excellent portrayal of a very complicated character. If the movie has a fault, it’s in the overly gloomy and gritty presentation that is undoubtedly going to scare off potential viewers. Knowing what you’re getting into ahead of time should soften the sharp edges a little, but don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re going to get a romanticized vision of anything – you aren’t. What you will get is an excellent portrayal of a man in crisis. As well as a story filled with pathos and the confusion of grief. Accept it for what it is and you’ll come away appreciating the story and the performance.


Recommended: Yes