Gus Van Sant's new film fails to come alive despite some promising ideas, and ends up a frustrating portrait of a mis-judged young couple...
Restless, the latest film from revered director Gus Van Sant, is very concerned with its own mortality. The characters are too, with young couple Annabel (Mia Wasikowska) and Enoch (Henry Hopper) not only meeting at a funeral, but parting at one too.
Enoch is a strange boy, a high-school drop out who we’re aware has some emotional and familial issues to deal with. We see him living with his aunt in a huge house, but we also see him reject her help and obvious affection in favour or attending stranger’s memorials and playing battleship with his ghost friend. If this all sounds a little off-the-wall, it should. Restless doesn’t seem to want to do anything in the conventional way, much like a rebellious teenager, determined to subvert everything ‘normal’, even if normal might have been better.
Annabel and Enoch meet at one of the crashed funerals that Enoch frequents, and quickly strike up a friendship based on their shared self-interest. It turns out they both have good reason for being preoccupied with death, as Enoch’s parents were recently killed in a car accident and Annabel is suffering from terminal cancer. The doctors have given her three months to live, and the pair decides to spend those precious moments with each other. They experience the kind of relationship typical to films like Restless, taking bike rides together and, somewhat strangely, lying within chalk outlines of each other’s bodies.
When Enoch is not spending time with his new girlfriend, he’s hanging out with Hiroshi, a dead kamikaze pilot who has haunted him since waking from the fateful car crash that killed his family. Hiroshi is either the strongest or weakest link in the story, and which one you leave with depends entirely on whether you decide his inherent inconsistencies are deliberate or the product of
lazy conception.
At one point Enoch, in a fit of clarity and anger, exclaims that his friend isn’t real at all, and he’s made him up to mask the uncertainty of his own life. This explanation looks good when we notice that his old school-friend, met during a trick or treat outing on Halloween, is wearing the same Japanese pilot uniform as both Hiroshi and Enoch. This is never acknowledged or explained, but even after his apparent realisation, Hiroshi remains by his side as large as life. The easiest theory to leave the film with would be his face-value status as a ghost, but the gaps in its logic soon appear and preoccupy enquiring minds more than they feasibly should.
Although Mia Wasikowska is emerging as a talented actress to be reckoned with, following her recent roles in Jane Eyre and The Kids Are Alright, Annabel is a strange girl wrapped in an even stranger film. Though we’re told of her short life span and suffering, we’re never shown it. As the film progresses, her health or vitality never deteriorate and her generic function in Enoch’s life never wavers. Annabel is there to reintroduce a troubled soul to the joys of life, and she apparently does her job through simply being there. We’re consistently shown that Enoch has no respect for anything, and the death of his girlfriend seems unlikely to change that.
In fact, Wasikowska’s role is so static and fitting with the ‘quirky’ girl so common to the genre, we’re at points almost encouraged to believe her to be an hallucination to accompany the equally ambiguous Hiroshi. She appears so passive and flawless throughout that it’s hard to believe that she could be anything other than a figment of a damaged and lonely mind. The basis for her and Enoch’s relationship is the immediate prospect of death, but both are surprisingly well adjusted for an painfully ill adjusted pair. Annabel’s family life, for example, is supposed to be in contrast to Enoch’s empty home, but an alcoholic mother is barely seen or touched upon, and we see only her sister’s fruitless attempts at coping.
Spending more time away from the annoyingly conceited couple at the centre of the film may have made it more bearable. The film is about obsession and detachment at its heart, and these very teen-friendly themes don’t fit in with the quirky style and potentially adult themes of the eventual movie. Enoch and Annabel are essentially just teenagers being teenagers, but the film lacks the same self-awareness omitted from its young characters. The last third of the film suddenly switches to the conventional, with montages of their time together accompanied by upbeat indie-pop designed to make us happy and glad of their experiences together.
Restless is so preoccupied with the subversion of normal romantic narratives that it forgets to make us care about the characters. The story rarely wavers from the central couple, but when it does some promise of a compelling film frustratingly emerge. If only the film had taken its dark themes to some equally dark places, the twee nature of a love story surrounded by death may just have come alive.
Enoch is a strange boy, a high-school drop out who we’re aware has some emotional and familial issues to deal with. We see him living with his aunt in a huge house, but we also see him reject her help and obvious affection in favour or attending stranger’s memorials and playing battleship with his ghost friend. If this all sounds a little off-the-wall, it should. Restless doesn’t seem to want to do anything in the conventional way, much like a rebellious teenager, determined to subvert everything ‘normal’, even if normal might have been better.
Annabel and Enoch meet at one of the crashed funerals that Enoch frequents, and quickly strike up a friendship based on their shared self-interest. It turns out they both have good reason for being preoccupied with death, as Enoch’s parents were recently killed in a car accident and Annabel is suffering from terminal cancer. The doctors have given her three months to live, and the pair decides to spend those precious moments with each other. They experience the kind of relationship typical to films like Restless, taking bike rides together and, somewhat strangely, lying within chalk outlines of each other’s bodies.
When Enoch is not spending time with his new girlfriend, he’s hanging out with Hiroshi, a dead kamikaze pilot who has haunted him since waking from the fateful car crash that killed his family. Hiroshi is either the strongest or weakest link in the story, and which one you leave with depends entirely on whether you decide his inherent inconsistencies are deliberate or the product of
lazy conception.
At one point Enoch, in a fit of clarity and anger, exclaims that his friend isn’t real at all, and he’s made him up to mask the uncertainty of his own life. This explanation looks good when we notice that his old school-friend, met during a trick or treat outing on Halloween, is wearing the same Japanese pilot uniform as both Hiroshi and Enoch. This is never acknowledged or explained, but even after his apparent realisation, Hiroshi remains by his side as large as life. The easiest theory to leave the film with would be his face-value status as a ghost, but the gaps in its logic soon appear and preoccupy enquiring minds more than they feasibly should.
Although Mia Wasikowska is emerging as a talented actress to be reckoned with, following her recent roles in Jane Eyre and The Kids Are Alright, Annabel is a strange girl wrapped in an even stranger film. Though we’re told of her short life span and suffering, we’re never shown it. As the film progresses, her health or vitality never deteriorate and her generic function in Enoch’s life never wavers. Annabel is there to reintroduce a troubled soul to the joys of life, and she apparently does her job through simply being there. We’re consistently shown that Enoch has no respect for anything, and the death of his girlfriend seems unlikely to change that.
In fact, Wasikowska’s role is so static and fitting with the ‘quirky’ girl so common to the genre, we’re at points almost encouraged to believe her to be an hallucination to accompany the equally ambiguous Hiroshi. She appears so passive and flawless throughout that it’s hard to believe that she could be anything other than a figment of a damaged and lonely mind. The basis for her and Enoch’s relationship is the immediate prospect of death, but both are surprisingly well adjusted for an painfully ill adjusted pair. Annabel’s family life, for example, is supposed to be in contrast to Enoch’s empty home, but an alcoholic mother is barely seen or touched upon, and we see only her sister’s fruitless attempts at coping.
Spending more time away from the annoyingly conceited couple at the centre of the film may have made it more bearable. The film is about obsession and detachment at its heart, and these very teen-friendly themes don’t fit in with the quirky style and potentially adult themes of the eventual movie. Enoch and Annabel are essentially just teenagers being teenagers, but the film lacks the same self-awareness omitted from its young characters. The last third of the film suddenly switches to the conventional, with montages of their time together accompanied by upbeat indie-pop designed to make us happy and glad of their experiences together.
Restless is so preoccupied with the subversion of normal romantic narratives that it forgets to make us care about the characters. The story rarely wavers from the central couple, but when it does some promise of a compelling film frustratingly emerge. If only the film had taken its dark themes to some equally dark places, the twee nature of a love story surrounded by death may just have come alive.
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