Burning Palms

Christopher Landon – 2010 – USA

Critics really hated this film, but while I don’t think it’s great or groundbreaking either, I liked it okay.  Landon referenced John Waters and Robert Altman in interviews and I think that’s the key to it.  It’s not supposed to be genuinely upsetting and inflammatory – in the way that the misanthropic films of Todd Solondz or Alexander Payne are; it’s aiming for more of a sardonic wackiness.  Landon certainly wants you to laugh more than cringe.  Although, by tackling such deliberately controversial subject matters, he should hardly have been surprised if a mere percentage of the audience is able to buy into his approach.  That’s fine with me, since movies that are crafted for the widest possible audience are almost always the most boring anyway.  Burning Palms – subtitled 5 Tales of Madness – is an anthology of disparate stories taking place in the Los Angeles area, typically about people with delicate sensibilities colliding head-on with the fact that the real world has no obligation to play by their rules.  I found two of the five tales rather week, and unfortunately my favorite, the last, is also the shortest.  In it, a pizza-delivering rapist (Nick Stahl) is disturbed to find that his victim (Zoe Saldana) is after him not for revenge but to re-enact the violent incident.  Whether it’s to help her get over the trauma or if it’s because she’s a sick and lonely girl who felt a bond with her attacker, we don’t learn.  I like that kind of ambiguity, or at least the fact that there are still some artists willing to deal with it rather than just tow the politically-correct party line about absolutely every touchy issue.