David Gordon Green 2014 USA
Starring: Al Pacino, Holly Hunter, Chris Messina, Skylar Gasper, Harmony Korine, Marisa Varela, Herculano Trevino
Angelo Jacques "AJ" Manglehorn, the title character of David Gordon Green's surprising new film and the latest eager to wax lyrical, back-porch folk hero in his oeuvre, is a man deep within stasis. A locksmith by trade (although when he briefly opens his beat-up old shop a fleeting glance reveals a coded electric alarm system protecting what little there is to the premises) he has long since ceased to regard himself or anybody else and fallen almost entirely from public view. He would be unrecognisable on the street and few would remember him if asked, perhaps he likes it this way, perhaps he no longer cares. He drinks then sets the bottle on a nearby fence for target practice with a gun he has no good use for, gambles while pushing away a now-grown man he once coached in pee-wee baseball during the years he was still alive, innocuous at every opportunity. His mailbox is besieged by a community of bees that he can't be bothered to banish having long ago accepted their stings as just another routine in his mundane little life. He has a son whose high-powered job and accompanying lifestyle don't include his moody, working-class hero father, a sick cat called Fanny, a quiet kinship with a lonely bank teller. By day he needles his dwindling clientele, more concerned about their lapse in cleaning their vehicle then with releasing the wailing child trapped inside; by evening he writes ill phrased, unanswered letters to a long-lamented lost love, the only glimpsed in photos Clara. All are returned to sender unread. About the only time he warms to a normal human level are the sweet weekly visits to his granddaughter, her mother ending the illusion by calling him Sir and telling the adoring girl "we all love our grandpas". Played by Al Pacino with a unusually understated charm he could practically be the subject of a Glen Campbell B-side yet he's more than just a typical hard-luck Green character. He's sad but utterly relatable, brusque but human(e), has bursts of fury and turns over tables more in sorrow than in anger, more inward facing than aimed at the equally crumbling community he calls home. It scares Fanny and scares away anyone he may possibly become close to, the table remains upturned for days. In what may be the film's best scenes Pacino sits opposite Holly Hunter as the aforementioned Dawn and both beautifully portray the underlying awkwardness and differing desperation their characters embody. In a late one she finally flirts only for him to start rambling about Clara in silvered tones, not in a conscious effort to reject her or because she isn't desirable but because the mere idea that she, or in fact, anyone could like him is now completely unfathomable to him, a throwaway comment about her dress becoming a waterfall of compliments to the wrong person. For his part Green similarly plays against expectations, throwing in woozy crosscutting and a sudden burst into song between extras who never appear again, gentle where he has at times been rambunctious, favouring realism rather than pandering to a set audience. There's also an aspiration towards the art house within what could be seen as a mildly clichéd, oddball-overcoming-obstacles romance with a dreamy, off-the-bone soundtrack co-authored by wordy yet wholly instrumental post-rock collective Explosions In The Sky and a minor role played by crown prince of madness Harmony Korine. Change and progress are the orders of the day it seems, both with Manglehorn and with Green himself, and, if the self-improving, hopeful ending feels like a revert to a much-visited standard, all involved underplay enough that the result feels genuine, lovely, slightly moving but still believably unlikely-to-work-out, as if the issues both parties carry may just stand in the way of a truly happy ending. Green's eccentricities too threaten to unsettle the film's structure and the leaden, on-again off-again narration to try the audience's patience but the sight of Pacino at a pancake social getting the opportunity just to talk is a treat hard to sneer at.
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