Chain (2004)

Director:

Jem Cohen

Writer:

Jem Cohen (writer)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

As regional character disappears and corporate culture homogenizes our surroundings, it's increasingly hard to tell where you are...

Awards:

2 wins

Cast

Miho Nikaido	...	Tamiko
Mira Billotte	...	Amanda Timms
Tarik O'Regan	...	Currency Trader
Rick Aquino	...	Piano Store Salesman
Douglas A. Scocco	...	Piano Store Salesman
Bill Stuckey	...	TV Announcer
Minda Martin	...	Amanda's Half Sister
Robert C. Gibson	...	Motel Manager
Anne Truitt	...	Woman in Car and Parking Lot
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Vanessa Hope	...	Corporate Executive (as Vanessa Wanger)

Runtime:

99 min

Country:

USA | Germany

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Company:

Antidote Films (I)

Quotes:

Tamiko: [narrating] When I was small, I did not have my own money to buy the things I wanted. My friends and the other students would buy many things, and I was ashamed. Beautiful things would come in the stores, and everyone at school was so excited. There were characters with their own shows on TV and video games and toys. You see them and almost feel like crying, because there is one that seems so special for you.

Movie Connections:

Featured in The 20th IFP Independent Spirit Awards (2005) (TV)

The Endless Malling of the World in Soft Focus

You don't have to wait for the final credits of "Chain" to see that Jem Cohen was funded by the New York Foundation for the Arts as it is painfully obvious that this is an artsy New Yorker's discovery of the malling of the country and that he read "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich as he didactically puts those quotes in his characters' mouths, as well as the other listed sources.

Cohen must not have spent a lot of time out of cities as he is shocked, shocked to discover that malls are the same the whole world over, as this picaresque tale splices together images from everywhere (like Walter Kirn's "Up in the Air" posits Airport World) that older independent stores and motels get knocked down for chain stores and suites, that less profitable chains get replaced by bigger behemoths. His insights can be attained by anyone sitting for 15 minutes in any mall food court or suburban traffic jam. He doesn't distinguish visually or sociologically between malls that are suburban downtowns to category-killers like Wal-Mart that have no modern agora at all.

The structure of this faux docudrama is intriguing. Cohen alternates monologues by two fictional characters, a runaway teenager, "Amanda" (Mira Billotte), who sees the endless consumerism of American malls as half-empty promises while doing pick-up jobs, and a Japanese company woman on a business trip, who sees the malls as half-full frozen upbeatness, which she compares to cherry blossoms falling at their peak. However, the two actresses speak with such droning monotones that I worried that they badly needed anti-depressants, though Miho Nikaido's very thick accent as "Tamiko" may excuse her lack of affect.

I kept expecting these two to meet in their final limbos but there is no such climax. A self-conscious night vision video commentary by the teen squatting in an abandoned structure looks cool, but recalls Marc Singer's urban portrait of the homeless in "Dark Days." The Japanese business woman's quest to develop a business plan that would replace a failing steel mill with an American-style amusement park she wants to call "Floating World" duplicates a notion from China that was much more effectively and ironically portrayed in "The World (Shijie)" and cross-cultural rapaciousness of the landscape was poignantly portrayed in "Japanese Story."

Cohen spends a lot of footage photographing sunrise and sunset of modern cities' profiles, to make them look futuristic as in "Code 46," suburban highwayscapes stretching into the horizon and mall signs. He does capture some amusing and poignant shots, like the birds nesting in a Sam's Place sign, with some very heavy-handed points, like a shot of the Enron symbol.

Cohen is an accomplished photographer and cinematographer but as a writer, his substance is just too weak.