In 2013, director Paul Schrader, writer Bret Easton Ellis, and actress Lindsay Lohan were the dream team assembled for The Canyons. The film was trashed by critics and shut out of SXSW for "quality issues", despite Schrader being an established director with over forty years of acclaimed movies in his filmography. Bret Easton Ellis, among others, later claimed the film was unfairly disregarded due to Lohan's reputation at the time. Frankly, it seems obvious that this was the case when a film festival would go so far as to suggest the film lacks basic competence. Now the film has undergone reassessment and has received praise. I think it's pretty good. But am I just being a reactionary, a Paul Schrader partisan?
It's kind of like the Star Wars prequels I guess. I remember enjoying them in the theatre, then questioning myself, then coming back and saying, "No, this is really bad." Then coming back and saying, "No, this is actually quite good." At this point, Red Letter Media's commitment to hating the prequels seems religious. The original Mr. Plinkett analysis seemed spot on at one point but now it seems sad and thin, only the satire of the Plinkett character himself remains interesting. There's that oft repeated clip of George Lucas making the prequels and saying, "It's like poetry, it rhymes," to explain why certain lines and character motives repeat throughout the series. The clip is presented as though to imply there's something flawed in Lucas' rationale but, at the end of the day, repeating aspects of a plot within a story of great length is not unusual or an intrinsically bad idea. An impression of Lucas' error is conveyed with all the wit of a kid repeating what someone says in a high, nasal tone. The implication is something deserves to be mocked because it is being mocked.
It's maddening to think about because you can't simply say all art is totally subjective. Some movies really are bad. Sometimes we love bad movies for personal reasons, sometimes we hate good movies for personal reasons.
Is Lindsay Lohan's beauty subjective? She'd already had a lot of cosmetic surgery by the time she made The Canyons. But the movie's about L.A. culture, a culture in which the precise look Lohan has is sought and paid for by women every day. Does a community nurture a belief in a standard of beauty just to justify compulsive spending or has familiarity made this style truly attractive in the community or is it a mixture of both?
The movie's almost American Psycho in L.A. The character of Christian played by James Deen is sort of like Patrick Bateman: a narcissistic, delusional power player. But the film is more about a community of people and how they compulsively investigate and keep secrets from one another. Christian and Lohan's character, Tara, frequently have strangers over to their house where they have orgies. Christian doesn't like Tara to have sex with other men, though it's implied it's happened occasionally at these orgies. He becomes obsessed with the idea that she's sleeping with Ryan (Nolan Funk), an actor whom Christian, a movie star, has recently gotten a job for on his current film. Tara and Ryan are forced to navigate a perpetual obstacle course of gossip and investigation even as they both engage in their own gossip and investigations.
The obvious irony is that, under the veneer of sexual liberty, there's a constrictive iron net composed of insecurities and suspicions. It's certainly a very sharp movie and performances are good or at least appropriate throughout.
The Canyons is currently available on The Criterion Channel as part of a collection of Paul Schrader movies.
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