The Canyons (2013)

The Canyons: Directed by Paul Schrader. With Lindsay Lohan, James Deen, Nolan Gerard Funk, Amanda Brooks. When Christian, an LA trust-fund kid with casual ties to Hollywood, learns of a secret affair between Tara and the lead of his film project, Ryan, he spirals out of control, and his cruel mind games escalate into an act of bloody violence.

“This is a failure from the normal standpoint where films are the perfected sum of their construction. There is no beauty to speak of, no clever writing. They could have found better actors. But is this the only way we have to evaluate films? Sure, we celebrate Kubrick for his meticulous beauty, Nolan for his mechanics of story; thereu0026#39;s none of that here. But we also celebrate makers like Herzog or Cassavetes for their intuitive pull to unmask a real life trying to balance, the stories all about this effort.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThis strangely works for me because Schrader reached out to where the cracks and damage have settled on real lives by the turn of things.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eFor an enhanced effect, you might wanna see this in a row after Mean Girls and a bunch of James Deen porn—I didnu0026#39;t but I could feel a faint tension humming at the edges, already interwoven with the fiction. And if you read about the shoot, thereu0026#39;s I think a Variety article that covers the gonzo wreck it was, Schrader jeopardized the whole thing several times over by casting Lindsay. Iu0026#39;m sure she was the most recognizable name he could get on his budget, but itu0026#39;s also obvious he had to have someone like her and not any other girl.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIt is soap as others say: games of power over the viewer with nervous exposing of souls as the trophy of cruelty. But having Lindsay and Deen in there asks of us to recognize the bare selves we know before anything could be touched over, itu0026#39;s to see her withered beauty, cloudiness around the eyes and sense of being lost as truly heartbreaking because we know itu0026#39;s not all acting. Deen is much less interesting, a simple lust for control. But it registers as a callousness that was already there before any character trying to act; no one who slaps women in hundreds of videos is merely u0026#39;actingu0026#39;. So when we see Lindsay trying to avoid another character prying into her life, when later sheu0026#39;s on a bed making out with a girl for a movie like this (and being filmed in it) or when Deen erupts on her in a frenzy; thatu0026#39;s real dust flying through the air. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThis is the kind of stuff Herzog tried for when he got Bruno to America for Stroszek, looking for entries into someone experiencing this as not simply artifice. Weu0026#39;re in lesser hands here but having this as our anchor rubs off on everything else, suddenly we have a whole mess of things that are no longer just flaws but the thing showing itself. I like that itu0026#39;s not all dressed up and somewhat raw, that the acting is inexperienced, that Deenu0026#39;s mansion is that mansion from porn videos, that the camera discovers an ordinary Los Angeles. It wouldnu0026#39;t be the same without LA around these people. We reinvest all the cinematic dreams weu0026#39;ve had from Sunset Blvd to Mulholland.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOh, all the stuff about the abusive richboy being a filmmaker, acting as life and feeling objectified in images are as obvious now as that whole filmmaker subplot in films like Last Tango and Blackout. The film does reflect Ferrara who was caught in the 90s between obvious constructions and evocative air. So itu0026#39;s not some great film by design. But Schrader was smart (or cynical enough) to know he could create a situation that would pull everything else, bending it to where heu0026#39;d like to go, skiing on the pull.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eWatch like you were unsure yourself where real life picks up again.”