Review: "Visioneers" - 4/9/10

(Counterculture for the sake of counterculture.)

In what might only be an off-color reference to the dark daydream of “Brazil”, the word “tunt” (a workplace appellation of some kind)--as it's applied to the world of Jared Drake’s “Visioneers”--is oddly similar to Harry Tuttle of the former. But such a comparison would, by no means, be a fair one. Or even an adequate one at that. I only cite it because that very difference serves to illustrate the effectiveness of the one and the not-so-effectiveness of the other.



For a movie so wantonly seeking individuality and solace, “Visioneers” tends to bank on tired ideas about (un)happiness in ways that have generally been much more pleasing in the past, both to the mind and the heart. Mike Judge’s cult hit “Office Space” relishes in a cynical, almost self-destructive, bliss in ways that only apathy could deliver. The TV phenomenon “The Office”, now in its healthy sixth season, is far more light-hearted but explores the span of corporate America with no less comic or human depth than say “Northern Exposure” did for the Northwest. Even Chaplin’s “Modern Times”, in which the mustachioed Tramp gets yanked through machinery like sausage meat through a grinder, imparts the quiet life of desperation with a sense of humor that allows us as viewers to comfortably share our disquiet through the communal experience of sheer ridiculousness. Last year, to cite a more serious example, Sam Mendes carried us through “Revolutionary Road” but still made sure to create the realistic whys and wherefores to which we can understand those anxieties.

“Visioneers” simply takes that fear of mid-class suffocation as a basic fact of life and goes to town on this existential horse with the desperation of Henry David Thoreau running naked through the forest.

The premise is simple enough. Drones go to work. Drones try not to go crazy. Drones ruled by consumer capitalist pig. Drone goes home and can't do things (like have sex) and then he tries to find out why, all while trying not to explode (literally) from purposelessness.

I'll admit, harrumph is appreciable, but it's far too quiet and assuming in its sarcasm to be really truly meaningful in the way that it wants to be. On the plus side, the sterile bluish hue that coats much of the work scenes and the hazy yellows that dominate the domestic relate a calm sense of defiance. As does the dedicated and tweaked-out performance of stand-up personality Zach Galifianakis. Maybe it’s the way he twitches or perhaps it's just the glint of crazy reflected in his weary pupils; a bewildered, manic and slightly unhinged look. Like Mel Gibson giving you the stink eye. Only chubbier.

Character actors meanwhile step in to flesh out what would otherwise be narrative bare bones; the best performances of which are delivered by a so-happy-he’s-creepy Aubrey Morris (as the Elder Mr. Jeffers) and Missi Pyle (as a so-happy-she’s-got-to-be-hiding-something talkshow host). Their efforts though are de-railed by the Drakes’ persistence of their own profundity.

The movie is so self-aware that it’s at the cusp of questioning its own very existence. With a glassy touch that just seems to spout such repetitive New Age sermons that dabble in big-brotherism as though it were the most revolutionary thing since the invention of the Segway, there’s a disturbing sense that the makers don’t realize their preaching to the choir.

Splotchy like the inkblots of a dissatisfied suburbanite out of Martha Stewart’s worst nightmares, “Visioneers” tries to tap into the same vision that Terry Gilliam had almost twenty years ago. A vision of a world without dreams. But perhaps if the makers had allowed themselves to dream of a world outside their own fantasy of oppression, they would have come across something more worthwhile and ultimately more full of life than what has been produced here. And less likely to make us, the audience, explode ourselves.