Kalifornia

The Review

One night I found my two cats and a neighbor's third lying in a rough circle on the driveway, corralling a mole. Each cat seemed lost in his own thoughts, but whenever the mole attempted to capitalize on that distraction and escape the fence of bodies, the nearest feline would take a paw and sweep the rodent back to the center. The mole quivered, wishing, I'm sure, for its protective blanket of earth. I considered rescuing the little guy, but how long could it live in a shoe box? Better, I believed, to let Nature run her course, for I had obviously interrupted an ancient cat ritual, one which, as a human, I did not understand.

The next morning no body adorned the concrete. Had the well-fed felines shown mercy and allowed the mole to return to the safety of its burrow? Had they killed and eaten it? I'll never know—and I didn't think again about the incident until I saw Kalifornia, a movie in which a pair of mole-humans embark on a cross-country car trip with a cat-man.

Brian Kessler [David Duchovny] and Carrie Laughlin [Michelle Forbes] live in Pittsburgh, where big-city sprawl creates familiar, relatively safe, maze-like paths. Moreover, both characters nest in the protection of social obligation; we learn, for example, that good-citizen Brian used a book advance in part to pay the rent. Their work requires that they tunnel into the human psyche: writer Brian explores the impulse to murder while photographer Carrie digs into issues of race and sex. They both compartmentalize these difficult though titillating interests: Brian keeps his serial killer notes on labeled tape cassettes organized in plastic cases; Carrie boxes the provocative subjects of her photos not only with the framing of the camera lens but also by closing her portfolio. The two even look like moles, garbed in black, their sensitive eyes shielded with dark glasses, as they exit their apartment-burrow to begin a tour of famous murder sites. Accustomed to defined, protected physical and mental spaces, they are ill-prepared for the open-to-anything attitude of their ride-share companion Early Grayce [Brad Pitt], who recognizes no limits of morality, conscience, or law.

The dangerous road trip has thrilled audiences since Odysseus made his difficult way home from Troy. A successful update needs to keep us terrified for the well-being of likeable characters. To provoke our terror is Early. Unlike his traveling companions, the audience has witnessed his violence. We've seen a random killing of two people so that Early can procure a birthday present for his girlfriend Adele [Juliette Lewis]—an opportunistic grab of red high heels, the tapping of which will get neither the original nor new wearer safely home. We also know Early has murdered his landlord because, unlike Brian, when the rent is due, he doesn't meet his social obligation with a check.

Brilliant scene transitions heighten our anxiety. In one, Brian pulls into a station to gas the empty Continental. Early, whose turn it is to pay, has pockets just as bare. As the ancient pump dings out the dollars, the audience alone observes Early tracking prey into the men's room where he kills again to fill his own tank.

Brian, the other male in the car, contributes to our misgivings. We can't look to him for leadership as he quickly develops a bro crush on Early after a night out at a redneck bar and the opportunity to shoot a pistol. Early lives in his body, not in his head, and the audience—watching the DVD on TV, not out prowling the world—understands Brian's fascination.

Sweet Adele provides excellent counterpoint. Despite admitting domestic abuse, she sees only the good in our bad boy. And he has his moments of charm, such as when he buys Adele a pink disposable camera so that she too can document the trip. Whether her naiveté is the result of low IQ or a defense mechanism to deal with a childhood gang rape, she spills a little sunshine into the darkening picture. We want Early to live up to the hero status she ascribes him—but we sat down to watch a thriller and suspect that he won't.

Carrie is too edgy, too dismissive, to be immediately likeable. Her style, her photos, her tongue are all sharp, but her disappointment over the gallery rejection and her sincere fondness for Brian, and later Adele, are softening. We have hope that she can save herself and the others as she alone senses danger. Unlike Brian and Adele, both busy in their own heads, Carrie has on occasion engaged the openness where Early thrives. She admits to Adele, for example, that she is both photographer and participant in her pictures—pictures that would inspire a Republican congressman to slash funding for the arts. When Carrie speculates that Early may have served time for murder, Brian explains that a parolee would not be allowed to leave the state. Brian cannot conceive of his traveling companion stepping outside of social restrictions. The more experienced Carrie, however, can imagine it, for she snaps back, "Maybe he wasn't allowed to leave the state. Did you ever stop to think about that?"

The four car occupants are perfectly cast and costumed. The whiskered, grimy Pitt has Early emerge through his skin, not his clothes, like a predator that has just rolled in antelope dung before approaching the herd. Duchovny makes Brian's adoration of Early believable because a trace of exploitable teenager lingers on his face. Brian might narrate the movie in a mature Fox Mulder manner, but the character's ridiculous earrings and immature purchase of a convertible Continental indicate that, despite the intellectual acrobatics, Brian needs props to bolster his young man's insecurity. Lewis keeps Adele consistently childish so that even sex with Early resembles a gleeful four-year-old bouncing on a rocking horse. Lewis's delicate frame and colorful, filmy clothes give Adele a flower-like quality, so we're not surprised when she gets crushed underfoot. Athletic and imposing, Forbes can be unconvincing during scenes when Carrie needs to sound powerless, but we are glued to her steely eyes and cheer her aggression when, as the violence escalates, Carrie discovers claws of her own. More importantly, Carrie wears ass-kicking black boots, not girly shoes, so we trust that she won't trip at an important moment.

We want the four of them to reach California and there part ways, everyone alive and well, but then Carrie and Early catch the news bulletin of the man-hunt for Early, and 40 minutes of white-knuckle suspense ensues. Our own adrenalin pumping, we wonder if Early will deliver the death blow or if our mole-humans, traveling under the open sky, disconnected from their burrow-city, will evolve into creatures who discover in time the the animal instincts they need to survive. It's a good ride.

A Different Opinion

Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote this review. I don't agree with it, but I wish I wrote as wickedly witty.

Video Teasers

You can view the trailer at The Internet Movie Database. Two versions of "Look Up to the Sky," the song playing during the end credits, are available at YouTube: here and here.

To Own the Movie

Kalifornia is an easy purchase at Amazon US or UK.

Cross Posts

Shorter versions of this review exist at The New York Times and Amazon US.