Film review: ‘The Film Everyone Hates’ defies explanation

April 1, 2016, 3:54 a.m.

Despite what it’s title might suggest, “The Film Everyone Hates” is less a fully-formed feature than a mere wisp of an idea, an impotent dandelion speck dancing insatiate on the winds of change. Shot during a single lunar eclipse, “The Film Everyone Hates” is director Buzz Allen’s first outing since his groundbreaking “The Film Where Nothing Happens.” Though more accessible than “Nothing Happens,” “Everyone Hates” remains transcendent nonetheless, cementing the fledgling director’s status as one of cinema’s greats — behind, of course, Terrence Mallick and the pioneers of the Neo-Kantian Azerbaijani New Wave.

Starring Gwyneth Paltrow (in a career-best performance) as bored housewife Scheherazade Klit, “Everyone Hates” charts the dissolution of Klit’s marriage to novelist Pen Blankenship (Shia LaBeouf) over the course of a dinner party assembled to discuss the typeface employed in David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest.” Klit, having married Blankenship for his intellect, finds herself increasingly repulsed by Blankenship’s latest novel (a cliché indictment of the military-industrial complex entitled “Untitled”) and, as the evening progresses, discovers she no longer loves her failure of a husband.

Meanwhile, across the table and unbeknownst to Klit, Blankenship is seduced by Romana Beeswax (Julia Stiles), a single mother addicted to prescription painkillers — consumed to take the edge off the loss of her son Charles (played in flashback by a disguised LaBeouf) in a boating accident.

Also of note? As salads are served and secrets come to the fore, Allen periodically cuts to a lecture on coitus conducted by Lucifer — played by a startlingly restrained Christopher Walken. It’s a bold move, but in Allen’s capable hands, it works.

Filmed in one interrupted long take using only natural light/peyote, “Everyone Hates” is the rare example of a cinematic stunt becoming more than aesthetic gimmickry. Resisting the urge to say something — quite literally; the actors speak entirely in un-captioned sign language — “Everyone Hates” is content to exist in the testicular ether around “Hollywood” without pat explanations and/or frivolous qualifications.

Though it takes multiple viewings to puzzle through Allen’s fragmented narrative (the film is told upside down), the journey remains a rewarding one. Without a clear plot or structure, Allen emphasizes gesture, chance and photogenie, highlighting the inconsistencies of the self in the face of violent internal dialectic(s).

The film’s only conceivable fault, in fact, lies in its run-time. Clocking in at just under four hours (not including intermission and the opening overture), Allen unintentionally undermines the payoff of this exceedingly slow burn. Creeping along at a pace that can only be described as Machiavellian, it’s a shame to see Allen speed through some of the more intriguing elements of the script (penned by Leonard Bernstein Bear, best known for his work on “True Detective”) in order to Entertain (with a capital E).

Regardless, “The Film Everyone Hates” is a rollercoaster ride you don’t want to miss — full stop, hold the presses. Drawing upon a rich history of proto-pseudo-expressionist cinema, “Everyone Hates” is the poor man’s “Un Chien Andalou”: a brilliant survey of the darkness of the human psyche and the hubris of the Vitruvian man in modern middle America.

 

Contact Stonewall “Tiny” Johnson at Avrillavigneisdeadandthegovernmentdoesntwantyoutoknow ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

Editor’s note: This article was published as part of The Daily’s April Fool’s Day edition and is completely fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.

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