UNITED STATES OF LELAND--THE UNITED STATES OF WHATEVER
Written: Apr 04 '04
Product Rating:
Pros: Ryan Gosling; ensemble cast
Cons: Didactic to the extreme; "21 Grams" for morons
The Bottom Line: Pledge allegiance to a film other than UNITED STATES OF LELAND, which despite an eye popping and affective cast is a pretentious Sunday sermon rather than an engrossing film
jarvococker's Full Review: United States of Leland
THE UNITED STATES OF LELAND opens with a sunny, sylvan shot of grass in an idyllic park. The comforting visual is gently skewed by hazy, almost blurred photography, as if produced by the dreamy confines of memory. Voice over by principal character is played on the soundtrack. "When I say I don't remember that day," Leland P. Fitzgerald narrates, "I'm not lying." When I say I don't remember what compelled me to watch this film, I can unequivocally state I'm not lying, and I'm wondering how I can retrieve my money back.
Perhaps it had something to do with the all star cast, or maybe even the inviting, all encompassing, dramatic portent of the title. But don't be fooled. Written and directed by Matthew Ryan Hoge, THE UNITED STATES OF LELAND is indicative of a filmmaker's ambitions greatly exceeding his reach. But that's just the tip off to film's problems. An ensemble piece about a suburban murder that truth be told masquerades as a supposedly morally significant and utterly pretentious statement about THE WAY WE LIVE NOW, Hoge's characters serve as mere mouthpieces to sound off on the state of the world and the meaning of life. Film, despite its noble intentions and earnest execution by splendid actors, is one one the most glaring and pitiful exercises in overwrought didacticism since last year's "The Life of David Gale." (Symbolic, since Kevin Spacey who starred in "Gale," produced and even has a brief role here)
Like last year's infinitely superior "21 Grams," THE UNITED STATES OF LELAND examines the lives of its several disaffected characters through the cathartic rigamarole of murder. But while Alejandro Gonzales Inarittu's masterpiece focused on the devastating ways guilt and fate collided to torment characters into their insufferable situations and actions, Hoge opts to use his similarly structured film (Cutting back and forth between characters; flashbacks; murder never shown) not as an exploration of grief, not as an illuminating treatise into the pathology of a teenage loner, but as a pulpit to sound off on anything and everything including media exploitation of victims, the misappropriation of serving a lifetime in jail for one "simple," horrible crime, and most egregiously the fallibility of human beings. It's as if Hoge graduated from the Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure Academy of Dramatic Arts, and is now waylaying a somber and strait faced "Be excellent to one another" lesson in ethical social behavior onto his audiences. The effect is grossly miscalculated and screamingly facile.
Which is a shame, because UNITED STATES OF LELAND has the germ of an important and moving story. What we have instead are characters who, when not otherwise feeling like generic types, seem like narrative contrivances there just to push story along (i.e. Chris Klein's Alan, not a character at all but a construct). If only Hoge had left his cloak at the altar and put on his filmmaking cap. "That day," as aforementioned, refers to the afternoon Leland Fitzgerald (Ryan Gosling) killed the retarded younger brother of his ex-girlfriend Becky Pollard (Jena Malone). It's a testament to Hoge's screenwriting ineptitude that these youngsters are saddled with the blandest of internal afflictions. Becky is in reform school because of her drug use. Leland has been abandoned by his famous, alcoholic father (Spacey) and raised alone by his mother (Lena Olin). When Becky dumps Leland to return to her smack provider, this apparently drives him over the edge.
Or does it? The majority of narrative takes place at the juvenile center Leland is placed until he can be sentenced. There he develops a friendship with Pearl Madison (Don Cheadle), a teacher and would be writer who has seized on the idea of adapting Leland's saga into a novel. Over the course of conversations with Leland, Pearl (and viewers) get the lowdown on Leland's estranged relationship with Becky, with his father, with an unhappily married and upscale New York woman (Sherilyn Fenn, in a development that means to further illustrate the emotional hole in peoples' lives, but essentially goes nowhere). What we never get is a reason that such a seemingly unassuming, internal, bright and innocuous kid like Leland could have committed such a monstrous act. There is no "why" to his actions, Leland argues. He just did it and that's the end of it.
But of course not really. As embodied by the excellent Gosling, who was as explosive in "The Believer" as he is almost pathologically subdued here, there is was a motive buried within Leland's nonthreatening facade. Unfortunately, this leads to almost ridiculously elementary and pretentious pronouncements about human nature. Hoge is poorly trying to assign Leland an almost messiah like, meditative quality, a modern day Holden Caulfield petrified by the phoniness of the world. Some of this is clever (Leland questioning the cliched use of that most standby of alibis, "I'm only human," with regards to mistakes) but ultimately overweening ("I feel all their sadness!" he blurts out in an instance of faux enlightenment). Viewers discover Leland's murder was more an act of mercy than deliberate, premeditated hostility.
Sadly, by the time this development occurs, viewers should really cease to care about Leland, Becky, or the loss suffered by her poor family (Film wastes talents of Martin Donovan as Harry Pollard, Ann Magnuson as Karen Pollard, and especially Michelle Williams as Becky's sister Julia, who serves no function whatsoever here). Matthew Hoge certainly doesn't. He has used these fictional characters adrift in the waste land of modern day living simply as cardboard springboards to air his shrill and pretentious, doom and gloom pronouncements about the world. For movies of this ilk to work, viewers must feel that characters have taken a journey through hell and emerged, if not pure, than changed for the better to adapt and move on. In THE UNITED STATES OF LELAND, the characters and situations all seem to come grinding to a shallow dead end. Matty, take some valium and oxycontin to drown those soul blues, brother, and rent "Airplane." The world is really not that devoid of empathy.
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