* Spoilers *
Sam Shepard won't be collecting any Pulitzers for the often tired, stagy script of Don't Come Knocking, but he has written a part that he can play and this movie offers some other satisfactions. It's a work that is better as a concept than on screen, but if you can accept the loping pace it delivers an unexpectedly graceful ending.
While all roles except Shepard's Howard Spence are underwritten, some strong supporting players, notably Eva Marie Saint and Sarah Polley, are able to make more of them than what's on Shepard's pages.
Sharing the playwright's sensibility, Wim Wenders isn't the ideal director to keep him focused. But Wenders' strong visuals add grace notes and depth to the otherwise meandering story. Fans of their long-ago collaboration on Paris, Texas, may be especially interested to see this follow-up, although it is well-described by another viewer as a bookend rather than a sequel. Then again, as comments here illustrate, this movie suffers by comparison with its ancestor.
If this is a tale of missed opportunities, the same can be said of the writing. Yes, Shepard is known for his presentations of Western myths, sometimes in sharp counterpoint to realistic settings and sometimes in fantastic or incoherent contrast. This script uneasily tries realism and whimsy simultaneously, which might work better in the immediacy of a theater than in a Montana thoroughfare.
As detailed elsewhere, aging bad-boy actor Howard Spence (Shepard)hoofs it from the Utah shoot of his latest horse-opera, feeling a need after 30 years to reconnect with his roots without telling his employers.
By beginning on a movie location and taking off on an antic trail, Shepard seems to be setting up an examination of movie myths of the West and their effects on actors and viewers. But he soon jettisons this for a visit to Spence's mother (Eva Marie Saint), and a cat-and-mouse game with Tim Roth as a pursuing agent from the movie company's bondholder.
In her 80s, Saint gives a sly, low-key performance and remains amazingly lovely and spry. Sam Shepard has always been one of those men who look better from across the room than close up, and after decades of hard traveling he seems distressingly more like Saint's husband than her son. But Mom's scrapbook of tabloid articles about her bad-boy son's misadventures in Hollywood is an artful way to fill in Howard's back story. Then, the script simply has him repeat the same type of antics. OK, we get it.
But Howard is surprised to learn he has a son, fathered on a long-ago movie shoot in Butte, and he's again quickly on the road again. More-or-less playing the Wile E. Coyote role, Roth might be said to have wandered in from another movie. But since this is a Wim Wenders film, his eccentric, closed-up character is right at home. He's an alternative version of Howard, equally a loner, but without the wild, irresponsible side that clearly helped Spence's actorly appeal to female fans. Shepard can hardly go anywhere without starting an altercation, but even when he's in a hash-house Roth is mainly interested in defining types of potatoes.
Meanwhile, a young woman named Sky is headed in the same direction, transporting the ashes of her mother. Shepard usually deals in violent, self-destructive male stereotypes like Spence, but here essays a female one, a surreally mild, well-adjusted earth mother. Only an actress as subtle and natural as Sarah Polley could cope with the sentimental claptrap of carrying around and talking to her mother's urn.
Still, Sky's unruffled calm makes a welcome respite from the angry contacts between Howard and his 20-something son Earl, played by Gabriel Mann. A hedonistic, hot-headed musician, Earl of course reminds Spence of his younger self. Unfortunately, while he's somewhat talented musically, Mann isn't a good enough actor to add depth to this one-note part. The talented Fairuza Balk is wasted as his girlfriend, giving little to do beyond looking funky (and suffering from a Hollywood diet, since if Balk gets any skinnier she'll be transparent).
Of course, the main attraction of this part of the movie is supposed to be Spence's reunion with his long-ago lover, played by Shepard's real-life amour Jessica Lange. There's a certain poignancy in the realization that an old photo of Howard and Doreen is the two actors. But Lange's performance is erratic. She can't decide whether to play a real person or play off that Hollywood subtext. That's even true in her big scene, where she runs a gamut of emotions when Doreen finally tells Spence that he's never gotten a life and he's not going to co-opt hers. All this plays like the necessary third-act blow-up before a resolution can be reached. It's not mythic, it's just crafted.
But the resolution does come, and as noted, it's surprisingly satisfying, well-directed, and within the context, upbeat. Howard Spence can't really change, but his children can. This isn't a movie for everyone, and I share some of the disappointment of other reviewers. But if like Shepard and/or Wenders, you might find it worthwhile.
Sam Shepard won't be collecting any Pulitzers for the often tired, stagy script of Don't Come Knocking, but he has written a part that he can play and this movie offers some other satisfactions. It's a work that is better as a concept than on screen, but if you can accept the loping pace it delivers an unexpectedly graceful ending.
While all roles except Shepard's Howard Spence are underwritten, some strong supporting players, notably Eva Marie Saint and Sarah Polley, are able to make more of them than what's on Shepard's pages.
Sharing the playwright's sensibility, Wim Wenders isn't the ideal director to keep him focused. But Wenders' strong visuals add grace notes and depth to the otherwise meandering story. Fans of their long-ago collaboration on Paris, Texas, may be especially interested to see this follow-up, although it is well-described by another viewer as a bookend rather than a sequel. Then again, as comments here illustrate, this movie suffers by comparison with its ancestor.
If this is a tale of missed opportunities, the same can be said of the writing. Yes, Shepard is known for his presentations of Western myths, sometimes in sharp counterpoint to realistic settings and sometimes in fantastic or incoherent contrast. This script uneasily tries realism and whimsy simultaneously, which might work better in the immediacy of a theater than in a Montana thoroughfare.
As detailed elsewhere, aging bad-boy actor Howard Spence (Shepard)hoofs it from the Utah shoot of his latest horse-opera, feeling a need after 30 years to reconnect with his roots without telling his employers.
By beginning on a movie location and taking off on an antic trail, Shepard seems to be setting up an examination of movie myths of the West and their effects on actors and viewers. But he soon jettisons this for a visit to Spence's mother (Eva Marie Saint), and a cat-and-mouse game with Tim Roth as a pursuing agent from the movie company's bondholder.
In her 80s, Saint gives a sly, low-key performance and remains amazingly lovely and spry. Sam Shepard has always been one of those men who look better from across the room than close up, and after decades of hard traveling he seems distressingly more like Saint's husband than her son. But Mom's scrapbook of tabloid articles about her bad-boy son's misadventures in Hollywood is an artful way to fill in Howard's back story. Then, the script simply has him repeat the same type of antics. OK, we get it.
But Howard is surprised to learn he has a son, fathered on a long-ago movie shoot in Butte, and he's again quickly on the road again. More-or-less playing the Wile E. Coyote role, Roth might be said to have wandered in from another movie. But since this is a Wim Wenders film, his eccentric, closed-up character is right at home. He's an alternative version of Howard, equally a loner, but without the wild, irresponsible side that clearly helped Spence's actorly appeal to female fans. Shepard can hardly go anywhere without starting an altercation, but even when he's in a hash-house Roth is mainly interested in defining types of potatoes.
Meanwhile, a young woman named Sky is headed in the same direction, transporting the ashes of her mother. Shepard usually deals in violent, self-destructive male stereotypes like Spence, but here essays a female one, a surreally mild, well-adjusted earth mother. Only an actress as subtle and natural as Sarah Polley could cope with the sentimental claptrap of carrying around and talking to her mother's urn.
Still, Sky's unruffled calm makes a welcome respite from the angry contacts between Howard and his 20-something son Earl, played by Gabriel Mann. A hedonistic, hot-headed musician, Earl of course reminds Spence of his younger self. Unfortunately, while he's somewhat talented musically, Mann isn't a good enough actor to add depth to this one-note part. The talented Fairuza Balk is wasted as his girlfriend, giving little to do beyond looking funky (and suffering from a Hollywood diet, since if Balk gets any skinnier she'll be transparent).
Of course, the main attraction of this part of the movie is supposed to be Spence's reunion with his long-ago lover, played by Shepard's real-life amour Jessica Lange. There's a certain poignancy in the realization that an old photo of Howard and Doreen is the two actors. But Lange's performance is erratic. She can't decide whether to play a real person or play off that Hollywood subtext. That's even true in her big scene, where she runs a gamut of emotions when Doreen finally tells Spence that he's never gotten a life and he's not going to co-opt hers. All this plays like the necessary third-act blow-up before a resolution can be reached. It's not mythic, it's just crafted.
But the resolution does come, and as noted, it's surprisingly satisfying, well-directed, and within the context, upbeat. Howard Spence can't really change, but his children can. This isn't a movie for everyone, and I share some of the disappointment of other reviewers. But if like Shepard and/or Wenders, you might find it worthwhile.