A huge number of youth dramas have been filmed, and each time their authors manage to shed light on more and more difficulties of adolescence. From such paintings, often incredibly powerful and multifaceted stories that you want to review again and again. What are we supposed to do this time?
Gregg Araki's 1997 film Nowhere follows a series of young people living in Los Angeles who are closely related. But despite the mass of characters, the main action is still tied to a character named Dark (James Duval). While everyone else is busy with their problems and tune in to the upcoming party at Jugifruit, the Dark One begins to see strange signs everywhere, hinting that foreign organisms are hiding among the earthlings. And this is at a time when he himself is at an incomprehensible stage of life. His girlfriend behaves incomprehensibly, and then a guy appears on his way, clearly not indifferent to him and pushing thoughts of self-knowledge. And this unhealthy scumbag with foreign body thieves, turn out to be oh, how inappropriate.
The plot, you can not invent a more bizarre one, and its essence will not be clear to everyone. It is not completely clear to me, and to those who are not familiar with the works of Gregg Araki, it will seem, to put it mildly, far-fetched! “Nowhere” is a kind of kaleidoscope, which got into many aspects inherent in the younger generation. There is a place for a story about a raped girl - a schoolgirl, there is a place for a story about a couple in love who are unable to get enough sex with each other, there is a storyline about a young skeleton who tries to impress a girl out of his hands to find out where the upcoming party will take place.
And there are also similar offshoots playing out against the background of how the Dark One imagines an alien invasion. It borders all this, of course, with farce, but you watch this movie, for some reason, not breaking away, and time flies in his company, very imperceptibly. Heroes are young and handsome, from them comes some inexplicable attraction, covering some oversights of the tape. The blunders, concealing a share of carelessness, lurking in many of its corners. However, nothing prevents the picture, in general, to remain fascinating, firmly singing its truths.
Some may say that, as for the drama in Nowhere, it hurts a lot of superfluous genre hodgepodge and little proper deepening into the everyday complexity of its characters, which makes it go beyond the decent. And in principle, these people would be right to complain to the director. But here the viewer needs to understand that the paintings of Gregg Araki are a special territory, which is ruled by slightly different concepts and rules in relation to what is a good film and what is a bad one. It is only when you realize this that you have the right to criticize his work.
So get a closer look at his work and his way of presenting material, or watch the film several times before making a verdict. Not much, but still this is an entertaining film that can please everyone who is able to imbue his atmosphere and his mood. Full of mystification and humanism, it bribes with its extraordinary views of the world, and many underwater messages. Such pictures should be able to look and always be open, to what can be hidden in them, far from the most prosaic morality.
7 out of 10
The title of the film characterizes it only partially, you can safely add “about nothing specific”, so it will be more accurate. Timekeeping of the picture is small, which is an undoubted plus, but this time is enough for a complete understanding of what is happening. No scripted reservations – young people hang out, take illegal drugs, actively seek and find partners for intercourse, carefreely burn their lives in alcoholic and drug couples. No morals, no warnings. People just have fun, sometimes suffer, reflect on it, as befits their generation. Of course, drugs do their dark work and therefore not everything is so rosy and beneficial, but these sad consequences do not look like typical moralizing, it seems that the director woke up to the desire to dramatize a little, a kind of whim. There is a deliberate inflection, there is no talk of any empathy, no intelligent thought is visited, even a hint of it - the action goes on as usual, and the viewer acts only as an outside observer.
I want to note the acting work, which is characterized by an extremely curious presentation. All characters are abnormal in their own way, absolutely everyone has distinctive features that make them outspoken informals. Young talents really tried, got used to their roles, only thanks to this, the viewer sometimes manages to plunge into what is happening.
The film can be recommended for viewing, because such youth-addicted topics are close to certain details of a certain age contingent. I am already very far from all this, so sometimes I even missed it, but this does not mean that the picture will not find its grateful viewer.
The film, which is the final part of Greg Araki’s trilogy about teenagers, drives themes of promiscuous sex, drug use, and youth idleness to the point of absurdity.
The film is visually very interesting, especially interesting to watch over time (I now have 2017) and all these items of clothing and surroundings now seem to be some artifacts of the past, despite the fact that the fashion for rave style and style of the 90s returns to the peak of popularity (chokers, long men's haircuts, braces, leather dresses, skirts, plastic jewelry, bright colors and hairstyles).
The beginning of the film didn’t seem so mean to me after I saw the movie end. Watching the beginning of the film immediately after it ended, I realized that the beginning could be seen as Black’s dream, his dreams. What's he craving? Just an orgasm? Satisfaction of carnal desire?
Perhaps he longs to meet someone who would be special to him on this terrible terrible planet and whom he could love, and who would love him as he is.
Perhaps all the characters of this film confuse their deafening desire for love with lust, drown out all this with drugs and have already become so used to all this nonsense that even a happy ending turns into a mockery.
The whole film is a great mockery of this way of life that the director did not even offer the characters of the film any happy ending, except for a stupid death or transformation into a disgusting insect.
9 out of 10
The film is short, which suggests that the action will develop rapidly. That's right. The story actually takes one day.
The operator knows his business - everything is in its place. The angles are great.
It's ragged. Quick.
The soundtrack is great. Each song in each episode gives the action its own uniqueness. The director knows the music.
I especially emphasize the names of the main characters: Dark, Egg, Blojob, Lilith, Lucifer - this is just a find. No bad names. It creates a sense of a slightly different reality.
Nowhere and nowhere, something phenomenal somewhere, and it happens, - about such words can describe the meaning of the carbohydrated, wild, fantasy of Gregg Araki, bearing a capacious and fair to its content the name "Nowhere". So what's the movie about? About that state, then you are young, stupid, handsome and you always want to love everything and everything! Doing it all the time, wherever you have to, everywhere! A generation that has no more reason to rebel against anyone but themselves. Life for them is just a couple of seconds of the time of the universe, and somewhere there is a strange foot-and-mouth disease, and you smoke, drink, live like the end of the world.
Don't get me wrong, the search for meaning is later, in front of us a musical, enchanting clip of the 90s, from which he drags. Like “Pulp Fiction” Tarantino dressed in the costume of “Romeo + Juliet” Baz Luhrmann, becoming a charming comedy with a touch of romance, where there must necessarily be liters of blood and someone’s life suddenly ends, and on top of that there is a sharp, hysterical laugh. It doesn't seem clear to many people, but it has a thing that gives you a high, and after all you've seen, you're like a lost addict craving more! In addition, a sudden finale in the spirit of “Donnie Darko” is a gift.
The motley cast pleases: Heather Graham (“From Hell”), Mena Suvari (“American Pie”), Ryan Philippe (“Cruel Games”), Shannen Doherty (“Supermarket Partymen”), Debbie Mazar (“Good Guys”) and the observer of their actions, the alter-ego in many of Araki’s works, James Duval.
The musical alternative selection is delicious, here you and Suede and Curve, Radiohead, Massive Attack, The Chemical Brothers, all the tracks have already been heard to the holes.
I recommend it! It is necessary to watch, but I warn you in advance, this film is a cool thing, only for those who see two naked guys lying on the bed, it seems a nasty thing, it is better not to watch.
Independent film “Nowhere” is the final part of the “apocaleptic trilogy for teenagers” from an American with Japanese roots Gregg Araki, which in addition to “Nowhere” includes inventive films “Full P” and “Generation of the game Doom”. In all three parts there are unifying moments, as the films themselves are not connected by plots and parallel lines. Firstly, as you can understand, the main characters are all young people. Secondly, the acute social issues that Araki is dealing with are truly shocking. Promiscuous sex, alcohol and drug use, homosexuality and animal violence are clearly shown, but slightly veiled by the author’s shell from Gregg Araki, shooting his film from his own individual angle.
The whole Araki trilogy is difficult to understand. In the spontaneity of actions, Araki does not try to eliminate the cruelty and lust that often interact with each other. No, this is not masochism or sadism, this is a reality that excites minds, but only within the boundaries of Araki’s fantasy, although it should be added that Araki’s fantasy is frightening and one can wonder whether he is not a potential client of a psychiatric clinic. Not every viewer will force himself and find the strength to take and watch the trilogy, but those who reach the final can confidently conclude: “I have not seen a movie like Gregg Araki.”
Another unifying element of the trilogy is the actor James Duval, in which Araki saw himself. This time, Duval’s character has a girlfriend (Rachel True), who assures her of her love for the guy. But the first party makes you doubt this: the heroine Tru easily flirts with muscular twin brothers. Duval decides to break up with her, and his behavior resembles the way he spoke in the previous part of the trilogy, when he was changed by a girl: “I don’t care...” In this moroseness, apathy reads a caustic contrast with the heroes of Heather Graham and Ryan Phillippe, who directly bulges expression gradually grows into aggressive behavior and careless attitude to others, for them there are only them.
In general, this time Gregg Araki quite a decent number of plot twists and turns, in which he touched on the idea of suicide, often the main topic in “Full P”, and the final stage of suicide expressed in “Nowhere”. With his strangeness, he touched even the genre of cosmofantasy with aliens, however, nausea from what he saw arose from the first seconds and only accumulated. Someone from the main characters do not want to look for in themselves, there is hope that rationalism and the possibility of sane existence prevails over the minds of teenagers, or that from horror through the eyes of Araki becomes clearly not in itself.
Another noticeable difference from the other two parts of the picture: the presence of young, promising actors, before that Araki used a small cast of actors. Among the participants of Nowhere, not only the above-mentioned Heather Graham (" From Hell) and Ryan Phillippe (" Cruel Games) draw attention to themselves, but also Mena Suwari (" American Beauty), Christina Applegate (" Sweetheart), Shannen Doherty (" Supermarket Partymen), Denise Richards ("Star Troops), Rose McGowan (" Grayndahnni, Marodhauschela, the main character of the film with Kathrashchia, Kathya, played the main role in the movie "Lordagia" by Dengrastroy (" by Denni) Quite a phenomenal composition for arthouse, but we must not forget that at that time all the actors were just taking the first steps in cinema and that they drew the attention of the great original Gregg Araki would play a plus for the portfolio.
I will not advise anyone to watch this film, and the entire “apocaleptic trilogy for teenagers” from Gregg Araki – here everyone’s choice, the only thing that can be said here is that Gregg Araki’s films, including Nowhere, will not be seen from anyone else.
And now that generation can not breathe enough, close their eyes, let go of thoughts and just enjoy the life that is happening every day. What do I do? What's up? This is familiar to many when you are interested in literally everything, and especially what everyone is silent, and the head is visited by new and new thoughts, there is no recess, and not every adult will be able to answer them, and there is no point in asking anything from older people, because they are unlikely to understand. It remains only to keep in yourself, there are no options.
Well, saving everything, accumulating, all concentration sooner or later begins to turn into a continuous negative, which is like a malignant tumor, grows and grows. Gregg Araki devotes his next film to the problems of youth, drawing attention to their vulnerability, flaunting various individuals with diverse characters: someone is closed, someone is too loose, but they all share one thing - uncertainty. They are everywhere, but at the same time nowhere, they really can not understand themselves, they are not old, but they are completely broken.
The concept of sexuality plays an important role here. Another mess, problems in the head, focusing on your desires, resulting in all kinds of tests: heterosexuality, bisexuality, homosexuality. The game is in different territories, and it is unclear what you are meant for. Araki is already less obsessed with gay themes, but it is at this stage that the director sees his salvation. It is clear that this is specific, and few people will be able to accept such a scenario, but Gregg in all works pokes the viewer with his nose at what you want to squint your eyes, turn away, so as not to provoke a gag reflex. And in this way, the author tries to break stereotypes with all truths and untruths, and often he succeeds.
“Nowhere” is the third film in a series of “apocalyptic trilogy”, focusing on the problems and gaps of the missing generation against the background of distracting and detaching events. If in “The Doom Generation” it was a “clutter” under the criminal road Movie, then in the project under consideration there is already a theme of the end of the world and aliens, which clearly hints at suicidal youth tendencies. Guys for lack of life goals and serious occupations, killing time in strange fun, promiscuous sex, alcohol and drugs, succumbing to their maximalism and laziness, just do not know where to go, it is on the surface, but there are deeper emotional and mental inclinations. Each of the individuals involved is just nowhere, and in fact they are all nobody.
Young Duck from the generation of post-teens or Xers (i.e. young people 18-20 years old) is hopelessly in love with a black girl who is looking for new sexual contacts on the side. Successive parties with abundant sex and excessive drug use make up the essence of this tape, which determines for the author, rather, a semantic and aesthetic dead end, than some hopeful prospect.
Gregga Araki has always been attracted by the colorful texture of the youth subculture, with its characteristic mixture of racial affiliations and sexual orientations. And this time he remained true to his aesthetics, revealing to the world a new "acid" opus, parasitizing on popular culture - advertising, fashion, photography, MTV clips. At the same time, this movie can not be ranked among the obvious achievements of mass culture, because through the tinsel of total banter, the shadows of authoritative ones are seen - Andy Warhol and Jean-Luc Godard.
Nowhere, according to Araki, completes his youth trilogy, begun by Full P (1993) and General DOOM (1995), the director’s most famous and perhaps most radical film. This “doomsday trilogy”, filmed, according to the creator, “in the natural interiors of hell”, is sustained in a specific form of “apocalyptic romanticism”.
37-year-old at that time ethnic Japanese Araki (educated as a critic and historian at the University of Santa Barbara) is known in the world, first of all, as the creator of not just shocking, but precisely “bastardly disgusting” films that painlessly able to digest “well, very large” gourmets. “Nowhere” became the most expensive film of this ultra-low-budget director at the time, although the cost was only $ 1 million.