This could easily have been turned into an exploitation flick, the kind that's so easy to visualize among today's profusion of junk. See, there would be a John Lennon look-alike with a phony Liverpudlian accent, and half the film would follow him around on his last day on earth. Then there would be a Mark David Chapman, who wouldn't have to be much of a look-alike because nobody knows what Chapman looks or sounds like, but he would have a violent past and have bizarre encounters with negative images of spooks and spirits, instantaneous shock cuts, an ear-splitting electronic percussive score, the fondling of the blue steel Smith and Wesson, the climactic ejaculation in the portcullis of the Dakota, the foot chase, the speeding cars, the shrieking sirens, the exploding fireball, the shots exchanged in the empty warehouse, Chapman spread-legged atop a flaming petroleum tank screaming into the empty night sky -- "Made it, Ma! TOP OF THE WORLD!" Well, you get the picture. But this Indie production doesn't adhere too closely to the dumbed-down Hollywood template. It's more subtle than that. It's quieter, more thoughtful, if not more enlightening.
Because, after all, who can understand Mark David Chapman? The killing of John Lennon was preposterous. Sure, Chapman considered Lennon a "phony," as defined in Chapman's favorite book, "The Catcher in the Rye." Lennon, who made so much of his spiritual identity, owned five farms with Holsteins, a weekend cottage in Florida, and five apartments in the Dakota. But by such a lenient definition of "phoniness," we are all phonies. Lennon could have been anybody -- almost was. Chapman even carried around a back-up list of other targets in case he missed Lennon -- Jackie Kennedy, Johnny Carson, and two or three other phonies. So this movie, or any movie like it, that attempts to dig up a motive from Chapman's fulguritic brain, sets itself an impossible task. Not even Chapman knows the answers.
If the film doesn't follow the received wisdom of Hollywood, it at least imitates a good source, Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver," which derives a lot of its stuff from Bresson. There is a slow and deliberate narration by Jonas Ball, who plays Chapman, telling us of his feelings, his deliberations, his confusion. The movie was shot inexpensively in New York and there are multiple shots of the Dakota, an apartment house that's probably familiar to fans of "Rosemary's Baby." The acting is naturalistic. It sounds real, rather than read from a script, as in so many TV commercials. There are the kinds of awkward pauses that are typically found in real life. Nobody's a stereotype. The cops who arrest Chapman clearly dislike him because of what he did, but they show more curiosity and disapproval than anger. The film is slow but surprisingly gripping.
This is partly because we know what's going to happen. And what's going to happen is so pointlessly tragic that it's hard to sit through. The climactic act is so hateful that it makes the movie irretrievably joyless. It's like watching a well-made film of a man walking down the sidewalk and having a safe fall on his head. Who needs it?
Because, after all, who can understand Mark David Chapman? The killing of John Lennon was preposterous. Sure, Chapman considered Lennon a "phony," as defined in Chapman's favorite book, "The Catcher in the Rye." Lennon, who made so much of his spiritual identity, owned five farms with Holsteins, a weekend cottage in Florida, and five apartments in the Dakota. But by such a lenient definition of "phoniness," we are all phonies. Lennon could have been anybody -- almost was. Chapman even carried around a back-up list of other targets in case he missed Lennon -- Jackie Kennedy, Johnny Carson, and two or three other phonies. So this movie, or any movie like it, that attempts to dig up a motive from Chapman's fulguritic brain, sets itself an impossible task. Not even Chapman knows the answers.
If the film doesn't follow the received wisdom of Hollywood, it at least imitates a good source, Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver," which derives a lot of its stuff from Bresson. There is a slow and deliberate narration by Jonas Ball, who plays Chapman, telling us of his feelings, his deliberations, his confusion. The movie was shot inexpensively in New York and there are multiple shots of the Dakota, an apartment house that's probably familiar to fans of "Rosemary's Baby." The acting is naturalistic. It sounds real, rather than read from a script, as in so many TV commercials. There are the kinds of awkward pauses that are typically found in real life. Nobody's a stereotype. The cops who arrest Chapman clearly dislike him because of what he did, but they show more curiosity and disapproval than anger. The film is slow but surprisingly gripping.
This is partly because we know what's going to happen. And what's going to happen is so pointlessly tragic that it's hard to sit through. The climactic act is so hateful that it makes the movie irretrievably joyless. It's like watching a well-made film of a man walking down the sidewalk and having a safe fall on his head. Who needs it?