[yasr_overall_rating]
A suicidal artist goes into the desert, where he finds his doppelgänger, a homicidal drifter.
Screenwriter William Monahan has displayed a stratospheric rise to fame and prestige within the past decade. His very first major gig was the 12th-Century crusades epic “Kingdom of Heaven,” directed by Ridley Scott in 2005 (who collaborated with Monahan again three years later on the vastly inferior political actioner “Body of Lies”). Monahan worked with Martin Scorsese (“The Departed,” for which he won an Oscar) and Martin Campbell (“Edge of Darkness”), and wrote the recent Mark Wahlberg starrer, “The Gambler.” He has promptly become the go-to guy in Hollywood for gritty dramas, fueled by morally-questionable characters seeking retribution and, ultimately, salvation.
While Monahan is clearly a gifted (though somewhat patchy) writer, the lackluster Colin Farrell/Keira Knightley gangster flop “London Boulevard,” which he wrote and directed in 2010, gave signs that maybe the man should stick to his day job. Sure, it was atmospheric and had moments of cleverness, but its dullness, lack of memorable characters and heavy-handed approach weighed the film down, deep into the murky depths of forgettable cinema. Monahan’s proverbial hand is no lighter in “Mojave,” his second stab at directing his own script, but he scales back on the characters and plot, and, with the help of a talented lead, adds enough enthralling moments to compensate for the occasional moments of artificiality and tonal inconsistency.
Thomas (Garrett Hedlund) is a rich celebrity filmmaker, who decides to isolate himself from a life of wealth, sleazy agents and coked-up producers. He goes off to the desert, seeking solace. He taunts howling coyotes, as if daring them to eat him (“Come on what are you waiting for?” he bellows into the darkness). He drinks and drives erratically, crashing his car (“Good,” he says, looking at the mess). With not much more than a gallon of water and a pack of smokes, he goes into nowhere, seeking certain death… Until he spots a figure in the distance.
The figure turns out to be Jack (Oscar Isaac), a pseudo-intellectual hillbilly, who joins Thomas by the fire and talks about Jesus, quotes Shakespeare, spouts government hate and pretends to be the Devil himself. Tension builds, erupting in a duel of sorts, wherein Thomas leaves an unconscious Jack by the fire.
Things unfurl rapidly. Thomas, all riled up from the encounter, his own demons gnawing at him, accidentally shoots a cop with Jack’s rifle, as Jack observes from the distance. Newspapers reveal that Jack’s been at it for a while, murdering naturalists in the desert. Upon discovering the news, Thomas, rather abruptly, decides to return home, putting his suicide mission on hold. Jack, of course, follows him, murdering and assuming a rich man’s identity on the way.
When Thomas’ agent, Jim (Walton Goggins) asks him what happened in the desert, Thomas glumly says, “Nothing.” Though married with a kid, Thomas sleeps with Milly, an actress (Louise Bourgoin), pissing of his producing partner Norman (Mark Wahlberg, a coked-up embodiment of every Hollywood producer cliché in the book), who whines, “He can’t sleep with the talent!”. Everyone’s emotionless, rigid and sleazy in this real world, sheltered as it may be from the sparse and lethal Mojave.
It comes as no surprise that Jack soon finds Thomas, which leads to a “Heat”-like confrontation in a bar – the film’s highlight. Jack promises to kill Thomas, “and you need it,” he says, “just as a brother needs to be served.” Thomas threatens to go to the cops, and yet Jack retorts with an ingenious monologue, which I paraphrase here: “You shot a brother in the desert… but you gotta be Elvis Beetle. That’s bad press of the show. You’d have to say you’re psychologically unequal… You’d have to admit to deficiencies – deficiencies you don’t really have. So you cover it up, at an expense of a man’s life… So which one of us is the sociopath, brother?” Ultimately though, Jack doesn’t “want to be defined by that sequence of accidents” anymore than Thomas does, and is ready to “move on,” challenging Thomas to a talky stand-off at the end.
“Mojave” is essentially a story of men (literally) confronting their demons – and what better setting to do this than the infinite, rocky plains of the titular Mojave? To quote one of the characters, “You go to the desert to find out what you want, what you are.” Don Davis’ beautiful cinematography does the film’s contemplative mood justice, with its wide shots of moonlit landscapes and close-ups of equally enigmatic, almost-mythical characters.
Oscar Isaac (“Inside Llewyn Davis”) is quickly becoming one of the great contemporary actors, elevating “Mojave”’s rougher patches with an utterly commanding presence; all of the scenes involving his Socrates-quoting, existentially mournful and malevolent character mesmerize. “The devil came to me and I said yes,” he says, with much conviction. In fact, Isaac shamelessly steals scenes away from Hedlund, who tries his best to carry a minimalist-but-epic story with next-to-no words… or expressions, for that matter. Wahlberg plays as if he just stepped off an “Entourage” set, though he does get some of the film’s funniest lines (“I don’t need any of you, pieces of shit!” he bellows out the balcony), which provide some relief from Monahan’s at-times oppressively heavy narrative.
Yes, we are deep in Monahan world here, inhabited by mean-spirited, lost people, ready to pull the trigger at every whim. Which leads me to some of the film’s bigger issues. The highly-stylized, literate-but-overly-poetic dialogue is beautiful if, perhaps, read on a page, but just doesn’t ring true when spoken by these characters, especially since it fluctuates between highbrow and ordinary at every twist and turn. “Mojave” therefore comes off as a peculiar blend of a cerebral art film, Hollywood satire, and film noir. Folks seeking to get their fix in any one of those genres are probably going to be left… well, confused. It’s as if George Bernard Shaw met Samuel Beckett and decided to write a 1950s-style pulp fiction novel, with a Western twist. Characters remain obscure – albeit fascinating – sketches rather than fully-fleshed out individuals with clear motivations.
“Mojave” does deal with a number of hefty issue, ripe for discussion, such as: appearances vs. intellect, and the effect appearances may have; the meaning of identity, fiction vs. reality, villain vs. hero, and the “duality of man” (Jack: “Do you know yet which one of us is the bad guy?”). It may be off-putting to some, with its brainy approach to a very basic story and jumbling of tones, yet true film connoisseurs will appreciate what it has to offer and overlook most flaws. Looks like Monahan won’t be directing for a while – he’s listed as the screenwriter on his next 10 slated projects – but “Mojave” certainly shows signs of an oasis for him as a great director.
Now playing at the AMC Mesquite 30
