LAST CHANTS FOR A SLOW DANCE (73)

Directed by: Jon Jost (1977)

Starring: Tom Blair, Wayne Crouse, Jessica St. John

The Pitch: A man drifts through the small towns of Western Montana, having walked out on his job and family.

Theo Sez: Still can't believe I saw some of the stuff in this haunting mood-piece (my first exposure to a fascinating film-maker) : our hero and a one-night-stand he's picked up in a bar ascending the staircase to her place, only what we see as they clamber up the stairs aren't people but weirdly corporeal shadows, laughing and talking like people ; a later shot split into the hero and woman making love on one side and a TV blaring on the other, our attention drawn shamefully but inevitably to the TV - which then (somehow) keeps blaring even when the woman walks in front of it, the image projected on her body ; frequent momentary flickers of colour, the film turning red or green for a split second, or else picture fading to black while a conversation continues, or a black-and-white shot with a bright-red neon sign flickering in a corner (how do they do that?), or a drab urban image suddenly followed by a piercingly beautiful shot of clouds at dawn, or (my favourite) a strangely affecting shot of landscapes whizzing past the window of a moving car to the accompaniment of random static (an artist's impression of the background rush of wind we hear crowding through the window in a silent car). Film-as-Art, obviously, less about the (skeletal) narrative than Jost's artistry in making each image interesting (even on a so-so video transfer), building a powerful atmosphere of restless alienation - but it's not just about the aesthetics, linking to a sense of underclass rage, what it means to go through life with a soul-destroying job or no job at all (as in something like HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, mental breakdown mirrors social disenfranchisement). The film's strength is the melding of form and content, Blair's anti-hero tumbling between lassitude and sharp, funny rants (his incongruously nasal laugh is very effective) just as the film shifts between miserablism and visual legerdemain, Jost's camera passively observing then darting neurotically through a crowded space, trying in vain to make sense of it : the film seems designed to approximate a mind on the edge (teasingly offset by the resigned, lulling rhythms of country-and-Western music). Its limitation is the way form becomes content, stifling any sense of independent narrative (you might say the film-maker is too strong for his own movie), making the ending a mild disappointment as well as a reminder the film was - unfortunately, in my opinion - inspired by the life of Gary Gilmore ; the whole banality-of-Evil thing seems, well, banal, unworthy of the endlessly suggestive dead-endness ("Dead End" is indeed the sub-title) ; otherwise a revelation, making you wonder about the neglected career of a clearly major film-maker. Is it too late to rehabilitate Jost as he heads into his 60s?...