I had always known Crispin Glover to be an "eccentric" actor, in the same vain as Steve Buscemi, Jack Nance and others, but never quite realized the extent of his counter-cult until viewing a showing of his first directorial feature, What Is It?, several years ago at the Oak Street Cinema in Minnesota.
What Is It? is the first film of Glover’s planned “It” trilogy, a loosely connected trilogy based on the essence of humanity and what it means to be a living, thinking organism in a world of disarray and allusion. What Is It? is a film that questions who we are, and the division between the internal and external self. The majority of the characters have Down’s syndrome, but are acting roles of “normal” persons; the Down’s syndrome is merely a circumstance of the performer, and not at all a condition of the plot or narrative within the film. Here we are shocked by a rare glimpse of truth, forced to look beyond the obvious condition of the actors, and into the roles that they portray.
As an experimentalist at heart, I have never warmed up to or particularly understood narrative cinema for several reasons: One is that there are no more than a handful of actors in the World that can effectively handle heavy and extensive dialog-- all but an elite few appear contrived or fake, in no way reflecting what it would actually be like to live in that particular situation. The other main reason is that reality itself is typically far more interesting than a narrative film, and if I wanted that, I’d simply go outside and walk around for 90 minutes. For me, “reality” portrayed in fiction film is generally quite boring, and does little to expand our culture.
By using practically all actors with disabilities in What Is It?, Glover effectively transcends the usual fakery of acting, using the disability as a sleight-of-hand to distract the viewer into a lulled state of genuine narrative interest. Not to mention, the features of these characters are much more cinematically appealing than “normal” faces, and work toward maximizing the visual potential of each scene. The characters become both actors and “props,” to tantalize our voyeuristic sensibilities.
Another element that these actors create is a natural sense of psilocybinistic free-fall, while as the film progresses the mind is tricked into seeing the disabled actors as “normal” people, and we begin to identify with them as we might our "normal" selves. If we allow our minds to relax during the viewing of the film, it can legitimately feel as though you, the viewer, has Down’s syndrome as well.
Visually, the film is overwhelmingly stunning, mixing elements of Fantasia, Un Chien Andalou and Plan 9 From Outer Space. There are also other narrative and stylistic elements similar to noted disability films, such as Freaks, Even Dwarfs Started Small, and The Elephant Man. All and all, the film is much more fantastic that anything “reality” could conceive of, making the overall work highly intriguing, thought-provoking and enjoyable.
The extremely visual and unusual nature of the film does overpower during the first initial viewing, and tends to offset the true meaning behind the film. This is not at all a criticism, although is does make it difficult to properly review, as repeated viewings are all but impossible given the screening limitations of the film. It is widely known that Glover will only show this film personally, and that no copies are available for rental or elsewhere.
That said, after the first ten minutes of the film, I was convinced that it may be the finest film I had ever seen, and was content to relax and enjoy the ride. This is certainly one of the most groundbreaking films of our time, and well worth any rare opportunity to see.
d.anderson 2011
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