Prince Avalanche

"You tried kill yourself by jumping off a 12 foot cliff?" (Lance to Alvin)

I'm a sucker for minimalism and absurdism, the kind Samuel Beckett and Jerry Seinfeld make their own: terse dialogue about nothing that somehow elicits humor and becomes something deeper with thoughts about life, loss, and hope.

Writer-director David Gordon Green has crafted a simple bromatic morality tale of two guys painting road lines in 1988 after a forest fire near Austin, Texas. The purged, scorched landscape of the ravaged but beautiful Bastrop State Park serves as metaphor for the men/boys' cleansing journey marching toward a renewed life. One critic calls it "broken people in a broken forest."

The larger concerns of the film, which is episodic with love and loss overlaying the quotidian activities of painting road lines, are manifold: In Alvin's (Paul Rudd) case, how can he keep his lover, Madison, when he is absent and really has little to offer? In Lance's (EmileHirsch) life, how can he mature enough to deal with the heartbreak his sister is causing Alvin by breaking up with him. Alvin and Lance's conversation lightly brushes the issue of their relationship with women, but in simple lives, this issue is grand and well accounted for by Green's spare dialogue: "Can we enjoy the silence?"

As in Beckett's Waiting for Godot, where the characters are trying "to hold the terrible silence at bay," nothing like God or illumination is arriving, just an old man (Lance LeGault) driving a truck with some moonshine and pithy life advice.

As the road lines and the drink proliferate, issues for the three men emerge having to do with their relationships with women. The ingenious part is to make what the truck driver says and does echo the very heart of the conflicts with the two line painters.

So Prince Avalanche (a title Green admits makes little sense but could reflect the absurdist atmosphere, wherein they are lords of chaos at best) is also about nothing because nothing is happening while life-defining relationships are lying underneath. As with Hemingway, the spare story asks you to consider if the bell is tolling for just these three loners, or is it tolling for you, too?

You don't need to be a Prince who causes Avalanches to see that the issues of love and women do amount to a hill of beans for each little male life. Simplicity trumps complexity once again.

The original film, "Á annan veg," was a nice surprise when I discovered and watched it during a red-eye flight with IcelandAir. I had never heard of it before, so even in Iceland, it's quite obscure, so I found it a little weird that it was being remade in Hollywood.

This remake is in most parts a carbon-copy of the original with the Icelandic dialog translated into English, but that's not really a bad thing. It's interesting to see the story in a different, but eerily the exact same, place.

There are really only three characters in the whole movie: the adult man, the young man and the truck driver. I prefer Paul Rudd to most actors any day of the week, so he wins, and Emile Hirsch was fine as the young man; however, I kinda liked the truck driver better in the original version, because there, he had this strange "I surely am a sex offender" vibe, which is lacking here. It just gave him a little more personality.

All in all, a good watch. Simple story, but interesting and slightly better than the original because of the Rudd-factor.

If two dudes quarrel in the woods ... do they make a sound? Director David Gordon Green has graciously stepped back from making underachieving R-rated comedies to give us what could end up amounting to an underachieving R-rated comedy, but in truth offers a good deal more.

Based on a story by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurosson, "Prince Avalanche" follows two men doing road repair work in the wildfire-ravaged Texas wilderness in the summer of 1988. Alvin (Paul Rudd) has hired his girlfriend's brother, Lance (Emile Hirsch) to work alongside him hammering in reflector posts and painting traffic lines. The two are archetypal opposites: Alvin the focused, organized and wiser character and Lance the immature, unskilled free- wheeler. Their naturally tenuous relationship goes through ups and downs and unsurprisingly, the two find common ground in their opposite approaches and perspectives.

The David Gordon Green who directs this film recalls the one who made "All the Real Girls" and "Snow Angels," not the one appeared to steal his name and made "Pineapple Express," "Your Highness" and "The Sitter." One could argue it's a middle ground offering between Green's two extremes because of the film's comic angle, but the pace and style has more Terrence Malick influence than anything else and the humor isn't written in so much as it emerges organically from the back-and-forth of the performances.

With a combination of nature establishing shots, the camera zooming down a road and a stirring soundtrack from Austin-based post-rockers Explosions in the Sky (a nice local touch), "Avalanche" exudes indie-ness. It's quirky, comically exaggerated, poignantly human and Green tells it in a logical but atypical narrative structure. The film is a voice-over narrator away from being so independent it wouldn't be independent anymore.

Half of "Prince Avalanche" focuses on setting a reflective tone through visuals, while the other half examines these characters through their dialogue with one another. Much of the script consists of conversations that simultaneously reveal their utter simplicity as well as their true humanity. The story ultimately mediates on notions of loneliness and our need for companionship in both platonic and non-platonic forms.

Rudd and Hirsch make all the comedy click, though Green has a way of framing certain shots that bring out the humor in seemingly ordinary situations. Both actors are on top of their game -- few can strike a balance between comedy and honesty like Rudd and "Avalanche" is an ideal showcase for that talent. Hirsch, meanwhile, continues to offer up evidence why he's grossly underrated.

"Prince Avalanche" tries to find that sweet spot between comedy and relationship drama, and though it strikes a few resonant chords emotionally speaking, it's not nearly as fulfilling or powerful as Green's poetic imagery suggests that it desires to be. It has a bit too much fun reveling in its weirdness and goofy, innocent man-child characters, but on the flip side, how many films with goofy, innocent man-child characters even manage to achieve this level of thoughtfulness?

~Steven C

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If Emile Hirsch and Paul Rudd get stuck in the woods, does it make for a good movie?

This is the question Prince Avalanche asks of us, and the answer is a resounding yes. The film is a low-budget bromance that focuses on the relationship of two road workers revamping Texas roads after a forest fire wipes them out.

Spending weeks at a time isolated from society, our two protagonists get to know each other very well, and talk about everything and anything together – but mostly women. Alvin, (Paul Rudd) is dating Lance's (Emile Hirsch) older sister Madison, while Lance is constantly looking forward to the day when he can leave the forest and head back into the city where all the girls are.

The pair of actors are wonderful together, and it's their comical and engaging interactions that provide the framework for this movie. Director David Gordon Greene (The Sitter, Pineapple Express) is no stranger to comedy, and there are some brilliantly funny moments in Prince Avalanche, but the humor never takes full focus. There are long, meditative shots of nature mixed in with some great dramatic events that make this film a more reflective piece than a funny one.

Unfortunately, there is a bit of empty space, and some scenes drag on longer than they should. There is also this sub-plot involving an older alcoholic character that never really goes anywhere. Despite it's flaws, the highs and lows in Alvin and Lance's relationship make for a charming and inspirational story. Prince Avalanche is whole-heartedly an entertaining film that finds that rare sweet spot between the heart and funny bone.

For those willing to try something different, you may find some value in this independent film. I thought the movie offered some quirky dialogue, characters, and situations, in its own quiet way.

Set in 1988, in the wooded areas of central Texas, near Garland, and not long after the devastating forest fires of the previous year in that section of the state. It's pretty much a two character film with Paul Rudd, making a change from the over-the-top lewd and crude of the Apatow-like movies, playing Alvin, who has left a serious relationship with a woman named Madison to "find himself" in the solitude of his new job in the forest. They still communicate by letter and he sends her money, as well as studying German language tapes so they can eventually re-unite and travel to Germany.

Alvin is the head of a two person stripe-crew (painting yellow lines along the roads of Texas) and has recently hired Madison's brother Lance as his assistant. Lance is portrayed by the talented actor Emile Hirsch, and is quite different personality wise from Alvin. He doesn't take the job very seriously, doesn't even like the outdoors, and is always horny.

I thought both Rudd and Hirsch performed quite well in their roles. Not everything works here, and sometimes the dialogue between the two seems flat and awkward. However, there's also lots that does work here and the rapport between them, even when they're bickering and arguing can be quite enjoyable. The late actor Lance Legault also adds some good comic relief in his role of a grizzled truck driver traveling the roads that Alvin and Lance are working.

One thing I particularly liked in the movie was the atmospherics and solitude allowed by the versatile director and writer David Gordon Green (Snow Angels, Pineapple Express) to just leisurely unravel at its own pace. It's unusual in today's film. It's not for everyone, but for those with the patience there can be definite rewards here.