The Brown Bunny (2003)

This film has received a lot of hatred, and I've racked my brain trying to figure out why. Then, it occurred to me: This film was not "meant" to be seen by most of the people who have seen it. See, there are art house flicks -- designed for art house audiences. Then, there are more, sort-of mainstream flicks -- designed for mainstream audiences. This all seems obvious, and it is, but it'll probably help to understand if you've heard something bad about this amazing film. Because of the controversy surrounding one short scene in this, some people who usually don't watch "art house" films have jumped on this film, and have walked away confused. Confusion leads to hatred, usually, since we fear what we don't understand, and often hate it too. On the other hand, while a lot of lovers of underground/experimental/artsy stuff are extremely open-minded, you'll find quite a bit of them who, pretentiously, will dismiss any new Hollywood vehicle for whatever reason -- just the fact that this film has Vincent Gallo and Chloe Sevigny in it is enough for some people to hate it.

So, you've got "underground" people giving it crap, you've got "mainstream" people giving it crap, you've got people misusing the word "pretentious" endlessly. So, in all this fire, the film itself is lost. Me, I don't really swing either way; I love Mean Girls as much as Dog Star Man, Home Alone as much as Water & Power, Freddy Got Fingered as much as Oh, Woe Is Me. So, I can appreciate this film on every level, because let's face it; if any film is worth appreciating, it's this one.

Yes, this film provokes -- as any great art should, and does. It is thought-provoking, but it also tests the audience. It tests the patience, and the thinking power, and forces us to see things in a new way, to try to figure out what the characters were dealing with. It's beautiful. Simply brilliant. Also, it's genuinely moving, which is rare amongst films of this ilk. It's almost effortlessly moving, in fact; so good that it feels like Mr. Gallo wasn't even trying. He's just that talented.

I don't even like the guy. He seems like a cocky snob. But he made a great film. Lonely, haunting... one of the most depressing films I've ever seen, actually. I loved it! If you enjoy stuff like Cassavettes, Fassbinder, Kaurismaki, Jon Jost... stuff that isn't simple and easy, and doesn't wrap up everything nicely, you'll probably dig this. Also, loved loved loved the endless driving shots. It felt like I was on a trip somewhere with the character. Driving shots never get old.

Will be looked back as a classic in many years from now.

Fmovies: I had heard about the controversy surrounding The Brown Bunny (who hadn't?)--the feud with Roger Ebert, the graphic sex scene--so when I received an invitation to a press screening, I jumped at the chance to see what the trailer calls "the most controversial American film ever made". What the trailer and all the hype didn't prepare me for was the fact that The Brown Bunny could also be considered one of the most original American films ever made. In a time of overblown budgets and enormous productions with endless crew lists, Vincent Gallo has almost single-handedly made a concise, well-thought out, conceptual film--a poignant, touching love story. It's not often that a director's second film is more daring than his first--money, greed and Hollywood power seem too tempting to most and sophomore efforts usually represent the big sell out. Not so The Brown Bunny, not so Gallo the iconoclast. He manages to make a second film more interesting, more intimate, more revealing and more memorable than his first. And he manages to do it outside the system.

Gallo's instincts as a director are spot-on. Not only does he pull from Chloe Sevigny the performance of her career, he also solicits from a cast of complete unknowns and non-actors (including Cheryl Tiegs) painfully believable performances. I have always thought his talents as an actor were underrated, but surely The Brown Bunny will provide him his due as Bud Clay, a motorcycle racer undergoing a breakdown while driving across the country. Simply put, Gallo as Bud is devastating. At one point during the film, I was so tense watching him fall apart that I realized that I had been holding my breath through the entire scene. When you stop to think that he is also directing himself and directing the photography, it's that much more impressive.

I don't know how someone circumvents the Hollywood system to make a movie in this day and age, but it seems that Gallo has not only done that, but done it in a way that is memorable, haunting and visually stunning. This is a truly radical film made by a very courageous filmmaker, someone willing to tell a story, tell it honestly and suffer the consequences of his convictions. Pasolini would be proud.

Vincent Gallo has a reputation. He makes movies that are for a lack of a better word, different, and as such, they find their way into the thought-o-sphere, where everyone forgets what makes Gallo's movies different, and the uninitiated walk away with the sense that Gallo makes real art that really is worth seeing, It's not. I promise you.

As I have seen Buffalo 66, I was prepared for the badly written dialogue and for the inordinately lengthy shots, suggesting, perhaps, that one can reach nirvana by losing one's self in the contemplation of Vincent Gallo's brooding forehead. What I was not prepared for was the sheer intensity of Mr. Gallo's narcissism. Whatever fundamental truth he may think he is conveying drowns with little more than a pathetic whimper, leaving in it's wake only the understanding that Gallo loves seeing himself on film, and that we should all love seeing him there too.

I get the sense that Gallo thinks he is like Antonioni - a master of capturing mood and the complex emotions of his subjects through minimal dialogue and vivid visual composition. He is not. The effect is that he doesn't know how to write and can't think of where to point his camera.

Oh yeah, and the controversy, the other hook to get college students looking for a cinematic rush to rent this crap from Netflix - if a movie is controversial it must be worth seeing right? Despite the desperate attempts to make the audience connect with his character, and to make sex a potent symbol,the climactic scene has the emotional depth of a cheap porno.

This is a bad movie. In every sense of the word. It is poorly written, ineptly acted, and badly directed. Gallo's only accomplishment is convincing the distributor (and enough of the audience) that it is difficult to watch not because it is bad, but because it is ART.

The Brown Bunny fmovies. While I give the film kudos for a story that I didn't see coming, after the first few minutes of needless (and extremely boring) motorcycle racing, I could see that I was NOT in the hands of a professional editor. The story could have been told far more effectively in half the time--or less. Gallo definitely needed to step away and let a professional editor do his/her thing and mercilessly cut scenes that didn't move the story forward.

While I could see that the author wanted the audience to crawl inside the protagonist, Bud, during the road trip, it didn't take that darned long to do it. Plus, his point of view changed too frequently. If we are inside his skin, then why are we looking at him for minutes in an excruciatingly long and tedious long shot? We need to see what he sees--at least with more consistency. I couldn't get my bearings in terms of what I was supposed to be experiencing and from what viewpoint.

There were other technical problems such as an inconsistency in lighting and shot quality with no apparent reason. And that spotted windshield drove me nuts. If a sign of depression and the carelessness that results from it, I'd have appreciated technique that didn't interfere so much with the visuals. Speaking of visuals, extending driving sequences to cover a song also seemed visually uninspired.

Probably most important, Gallo ignored common expectations of audiences and wanted things his way. I can't believe there wasn't an acceptable compromise. I'm pretty patient when it comes to art and film as art, but don't appreciate my sensibilities and expectations to be pushed beyond the breaking point when there appears to be no artistic justification for it. Too many scenes suffered from too few cuts and ran far too long, engendering more audience frustration than heightened emotionalism. I think this may be a result of an inexperienced and slightly self-indulgent filmmaker.

These technical problems aside, I'm usually able to spot a twist a mile away--but not this time. I wondered why all the women he encountered had flower names but that was just a hint that didn't make much sense until the end. But his name? Bud, as in "flower bud" and "clay" as in a substance in which flowers grow (he couldn't have named the character "dirt" or "mulch," after all) might have been a bit over the top. Again, typical of an immature filmmaker.

Was the encountered women's immediate sexual response to a complete stranger, fantasy on the character's part or the filmmaker's? I'd like to know how many men run into so many compliant females. From what I hear, not many--even when the guy is young, good-looking, and clearly pitiable. In this day and age, we ladies are a bit more cautious than that. Sorry, Vincent. While this may have been believable for males, I don't expect it was for very many female viewers.

I watched the film largely because I wanted to see if and how graphic sex could be incorporated into a drama without lowering it to the level of "high brow pornography." I think the film did a good job on that score, although I'd have preferred the use of a realistic-looking prosthetic such as that used in Boogie Nights. Perhaps the budget didn't allow for it or...who knows? It was certainly an interesting artistic choice and one that leaves me scratching my head in terms of the motive for including it. Symbolically, I'm a bit confused about it.

As effec

Vincent Gallo According to the credits is a man with many ( probably too many ) talents. While I haven't seen any of his other films, this one lacks a, direction. b, editing c, cinematography d, intelligent script. Vincent Gallo as an actor acts well as a depressed person, but that is all. When he brakes down with his former wife or girlfriend he utters a sound which could be credited to a whingeing cat, but hardly to a man which I suppose he represents. The repetitiousness of the scenes,his portraits in the mirrors show that as a director he admires himself as an actor, but I do not consider this as a positive.

When I watched the first scene for about 15 minutes which is a motor circle race, I thought I put in the wrong DVD about motor cycle racing. I wished that I switched it off at that point. The rest of the film I watched for curiosity only. The sex scene sticks out from the film, like his prick from his trousers. It would fit into a porno film, but not what is considered an art-house film.

Just because there is hardly an intelligent sentence in the script, and luckily there are only a few sentences in the film, it does not make it a work of art. This is probably one of the worse films I have seen in the past 50 years

Andrew Barry

I saw Buffalo 66 long before I started posting reviews at imdb, so I haven't written about that film but I loved it, I give it a 10, and after seeing The Brown Bunny at the Nuart on Saturday evening, I am here to report that I give Gallo's second feature film the same rating.

A lot of people seem to be misunderstanding this movie, or just not appreciating it, or perhaps both. There are many reasons for this, none of them valid in my estimation. The biggest protests, from what I've been reading, seem to be in the 'lack of plot' and 'vanity project' areas.

I can understand how the film would be a little slow for a lot of people, since it's basically an internal study, with none of the 'usual' mainstream (or even indy film) tactics. And in fact that's what I loved the most about the movie - how Gallo has the artistic wherewithal to be true to HIS vision of what a film can be, to how a plot of a film (and there IS a plot) can be played out in a different, less recognizable way, which leads to one of the reasons I think people are calling this a vanity project (aside from the infamous scene toward the end -- which I have to say is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to the film, once you find out what's really going on with our sick puppy Bud Clay) : because the movie doesn't follow a 'typical' set-up, requiring a bit more patience on the part of the viewer, a lot of people feel more comfortable dismissing this unbelievably profound piece of work as a 'vanity project'. In reality, I believe the opposite is true: Gallo is giving his audience more credit than they perhaps deserve, in presenting such a stark, uncompromising character study. The fact that a lot of this audience chooses not to accept him on his terms does not diminish his power and the power of this movie. Can't wait for the next one, Vincent.