Things Behind the Sun (2001)

I also really enjoyed Allison Anders' movie Gas Food Lodging (which I saw because I kind of like Fairuza Balk as an actress and the trailer looked really good). After ending on a high note I decided to take a look at this after seeing what it was about and how personal it really was to Anders herself (in the sense she was raped and in the same room they shot the rape scene in). This looked like it was going to be amazingly powerful and it was.The plot of this movie is that a struggling punk singer/songwriter named Sherry is found drunk and disorderly outside someone's house and it isn't the first time she did that on the exact same house. A rock magazine writer then finds out about her and also that she has a song called "Never Know Your Name" about her rape which ended up in her becoming unable to have any children. It then turns out that not only were they childhood friends but he knows the guy who raped her, it is his brother. He then decides to interview her about this but also lets enough information slip that he knows and the rest of the movie is them dealing with what happened.The directing is perfect, this is some of the best directing for a drama movie. Some of the scenes in this are some of the most uncomfortable scenes I have ever seen, which all stays true to the spirit of the story. Allison Anders, because of this is becoming one of my favourite directors and I will see more of her stuff.The acting of this movie, Oh god where do I start? It is phenomenal. Everyone puts in a really stellar performance in this movie. It also probably is some of the best acting I've seen put on film.If there is anyone who I think wouldn't like this movie would be the kind of people who watch the Hollywood glossed over dramas with one sided character portrayals all throughout. Now don't get me wrong this movie has one sided character portrayals too but unlike the Hollywood dramas, they're needed (because there really is no other way to portray people like rapists as anything other than some of the lowest scum humanity has to offer). But the real reason is that when everything wraps up, the people are learning to live with their mistakes and tragedies - yes but it still adopts the same tone most of this movie which is actually pretty sad.So if you don't mind watching a drama movie with a really cold portrayal of... pretty much everything then this movie is for you. This is a really sad movie - I'm not kidding and I've seen The Bicycle Thief and Downfall. While this isn't as sad as Downfall it does come pretty close. I personally think it is a masterpiece of dramatic film-making.

The best way to kill a technically well made film is through a bad screenplay. Exhibit 1A: filmmaker Allison Anders' 2003 Showtime film Things Behind The Sun. Ostensibly based upon Anders' real life 'trauma' of being raped as a child, the film wallows in every manner of cliché on the subject of victimhood imaginable, as well as wasting some fine performances, save that of the ever PC and increasingly hyperbolic Don Cheadle, whose performance here presages his terrible role in last year's Oscar-winning Crash.Yet, for all the potential this film has- and which a better and/or more objective director may have well exploited, it bogs down in the sort of Feminist PC clichés that made Monster such a bad film. The men are either unrepentant beasts- like Dan and his rapist pals, or wimpy excuses for men- like Owen and Chuck, straight out of the Alice Walker school of misandry. The film even ends with a trite dedication to Anders' long dead grandmother, described as a rape 'survivor,' not 'victim.'Yet, despite this seeming sensitivity, instead of showing how the vast majority of rape victims actually do adjust, mature, and cope with their violation, then move on, Anders indulges the Hollywood cliché of the eternal victim who cannot move on. This is, however, in keeping with the film's immature schizophrenic attitudes toward sex and psychology. As example, it also has too many pointless T&A scenes of sex, yet no male genitalia. Yes, we know Owen is impotent, so why do we need to see him try banging two different women, and failing? That such gratuitous, and sexist, sex is in this film is startling since the rest of the film is so PC. And, as a whole, the film is far too long at two full hours, and could lose much of its first forty minutes by just getting Owen back to Florida, and cutting the scenes of him shooting blanks. Yet, if that were not enough, there is the bizarre threesome scene with Sherry and two of her groupies, climaxing to furious rock music- an obvious steal from the famous drug scene of Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now, to the music of The Doors' The End. Even worse, though, is the whole device of the flashbacks tells too much of the story, and lessens the impact of Owens' telegraphed guilt, as well the impact of the film.Things Behind The Sun is, ultimately, an example of the old good intentions lead to….trope, and fails as a work of art, despite glimmers of breaking through its self-imposed political strictures. In that way it recapitulates its main characters' failures to move beyond themselves. If only such a trope had been ameliorative. Ah, well, there's always tomorrow, Allison.

It was such a painful movie, I don't know how to describe it. All I can say is that it was so well done that I was almost forced to watch it. I couldn't bring myself to change the channel. It was well written, well acted and well directed. Kim Dickens and Gabriel Mann did an astounding job portraying the victims. I could feel Sherri's pain like it was my own and I felt pain for Owen, as well. The only thing I felt could have been done differently is that Owen was just as much a victim as Sherri was. He was just a child at the time of the rape. How can he have been held responsible for something he didn't want any part of and was forced into by his sociopathic brother? He suffered for it, too. I understand why Sherri had trouble dealing with him up to a point but it seems that everyone involved forgot that he had been a defenseless child, too. I highly recommend this movie to anyone who's ever been a victim or knows a victim.

I've seen. Slow and painful this story gets into the psyche of the victims unlike most other stories treating the same subject. The stories and writing style of Joyce Carol Oates came to mind through the intentionally slow, methodical pacing revealing each layer of the painful retelling of the victims' stories.Arquette gives a brilliant performance as does Cheedle and Stoltz. Gabrielle Mann comes off a little too 'waah, waah, Mr. Sensitive author' but there's an honesty that rings true in his performance and works nicely with the others.I think the only way this movie could improve is to perform it on stage. It has an intimacy that could resonate much more effectively then on the screen. All in all, I highly recommend it.