UNDER THE MICROSCOPE: The Brown Bunny (2003)

SPOILERS & SEXUALLY SUGGESTIVE IMAGES AHEAD

When Vincent Gallo’s The Brown Bunny premiered, unfinished, at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, the screening became something of a legend, complete with an audience quite vocal in their distaste for the film, a famous war of words between Gallo and beloved film critic Roger Ebert, who called the film the worst in the history of Cannes (though he would award the final cut a 3/4, which was about 20+ minutes shorter), and all of the fallout that comes with a controversial movie – in the case of The Brown Bunny, said controversy was engendered due to an unsimulated sex act between star Gallo (who was also writer-producer-director) and co-star Chloe Sevigny.

With its prolonged pacing, graphic sex, and Gallo’s colorful reputation to top things off (more on him later), The Brown Bunny has left its mark in history as not only one of the most controversial American films, but one of the worst films in the history of the form as well. With this in mind, some may consider what I’m about to say an outlandish statement that exists only for contrarianism, shock value and a cry for attention, but I assure you that this is my honest opinion:  when I finally got around to watching The Brown Bunny, I was convinced that I had just seen one of the greatest American independent films of the 21^st Century (up to this point). I have seen it many times since, and it has never lost any of its power.

For as long as I live, I will never, ever forget the first time I watched The Brown Bunny. It was a summer afternoon in 2012. I had blindly purchased a used copy of The Brown Bunny on account of its notoriety (I was a massive connoisseur of controversial cinema at that time). Though I did want to see the film (especially considering my love for Gallo’s previous effort, Buffalo ’66), I put it on in the background on in the background as I messed around on my laptop, expecting to be insufferably bored if I were to devote my complete attention to it. As the film progressed, however, my attention steadily gravitated more and more into the film until it had me completely gripped by the throat.

Along with being emotionally devastated, I thought the film was absolutely brilliant, but for others, it’s nothing but self-indulgent pornography that pretentiously masquerades as art. When I first heard these complaints, I thought they were absurd, but they gave me something very interesting to ponder: The Brown Bunny is, in a way, a pornographic film. Unlike the porn of today which tends to get right to the point, many pornographic films of the ‘70s and ‘80s tended to be of feature-film length, with stories that exists for nothing other than to lead up to the sexually explicit climax (now, now) – call it classic pornography, if you will. In a sense, the scenario of a porn film is arbitrary nothingness.

With this breakdown of classic pornography in mind, if one takes a look at The Brown Bunny’s overall plot structure, it fits into the mold of a porn film: an unimportant plot that leads up to sexually explicit climax. As far as the "nothing" that goes on throughout, think about it – up until the finale, all we are watching is the protagonist behind the wheel of his van, stopping for gas, and other such mundanities of a road trip. What Gallo is doing is transgressing the signature notes of a porn film and presenting it in a completely different light. Instead of pretending to have a story of no purpose that would only produce laughter, Gallo gives us literal nothingness. I was reminded of The Killing of a Chinese Bookie by John Cassavetes, a film that takes the blueprint of a thriller, but depicts it for the bleak reality that it actually is.

For the record, Gallo marketed The Brown Bunny as an adult film, too. When Gallo was advertising the film, he made zero secret of the explicit sex contained within – the film’s controversy is due in part to a billboard on Sunset Boulevard Gallo rented, which displayed a still from the final scene (the cover for the CD soundtrack showed the scene as well). To top it all off, in an interview on the Howard Stern Show, Gallo even states "I was using icons of pornography and attached them to consequence, guilt, [and] grief." On a side note, if you have 45 minutes to spare, do look up this interview on YouTube - it is outrageous in the best possible ways.

Back on topic, though. One may ask; if there is nothing really going on in The Brown Bunny, what is the point of even watching it?

 After all, the primary subject of The Brown Bunny is loneliness. It is not so much about loneliness, but rather a depiction of the feeling itself. The liaison into this feeling is conveyed through the film’s protagonist, Bud Clay (Gallo – more on him later). For the vast majority of the next 93 minutes, we will be accompanying him as he road trips across the country in his cramped black van with his motorcycle in tow – he is a professional racer, and he is bound for his next race in Los Angeles.

The fact that so much of the film is just a road trip is where The Brown Bunny gets its reputation as an insufferable slog of a film, which I can understand. Personally, though, this is a big part of why I find it so interesting. Very rarely do we leave the inside of that van (there is only one exterior shot in the entire movie). Being faced with those vast, open roads with nothing but silence (save for a few folk songs here and there), combined with the film being depicted in a sort-of POV, I couldn’t help but contract that very loneliness that appears to torment Bud.

Bud is, essentially, a manifestation of the torment that results in the cycle of sexual fantasy and forlorn reality. This is further symbolized, of all things, by Bud’s career as a motorcycle racer. Like the masturbator who endures the cycle of loneliness, urge, release, repeat, Bud Clay’s behavior mirrors this behavior. Additionally, I think Gallo chooses this metaphor due to a parallel the two share: the thrill: like the thrill of riding a motorcycle at top speeds in the open air, on can compare the excitement of that to experiencing the indescribable ecstasy of sexual fantasy and the ensuing pleasure of orgasm.

When Bud isn't racing, though, he is driving hundreds of miles in his van. Here is a stark contrast; there is the fast thrill of the races, which only last so long, just like the sexual fantasy. When that is over, Bud must return to the confines of his own suffering, symbolized by the cramped space and slow speed of the van as it traverses the endless highways of the country. On a side note, the van is black - the darkest color on the spectrum.

On the subject of Bud, now’s the time to get the elephant in the room out of the way: good old Vincent Gallo. He’s either one of the biggest egomaniacs to ever walk the earth, or he’s the most brilliant troll of the art world since Boyd Rice with his rhetoric and resulting reputation, which, in turn, have polarized audiences. What do I think of Gallo and his egomaniacal and, dare I say, insane antics?  I don’t know, but what I do know is that he has an incredibly striking screen presence. He commands your attention the very second he walks on screen, and never ceases to be captivating. In turn, his presence helps bolster the strength of The Brown Bunny’s hypnotizing grip.

  

When we’re not watching the open road, we’re watching Bud’s face. It is a weary face of grief, despair, and regret – all of which we discover are warranted. Granted, Bud does share interactions with a few women along the way – a convenience store clerk, a lone woman at a truck stop, and a Las Vegas prostitute. Each of these women have an unspoken desire to comfort Bud (the scene with Cheryl Tiegs as the truck stop woman is beautiful), but each of these encounters end abruptly, leaving no chance for them to possibly bring joy into Bud’s life. No woman, however wonderful they may or may not be (we never learn anything of their background), can possibly fill the void of Daisy (Sevigny).

Though we only see Daisy in brief snippets of memory, we can feel the passionate love affair they once shared in those brief moments alone – isn’t it interesting how tragically brief warm memories feel when reminiscing? It becomes clear early on that Bud’s melancholy and inability to relate to women must have something to do with this relationship with Daisy, yet we are kept in the dark until The Brown Bunny’s infamous final act. When he arrives at his motel room in L.A., Bud is visited by Daisy, and she proceeds to perform oral sex on him.

Another elephant in the room to address: I have a massive crush on Chloe Sevigny. Because of this, I’ve been teased from time to time that my love for The Brown Bunny is based strictly on getting to watch her give a blowjob on screen. I don’t take myself seriously, so I don’t mind the jokes. That said, the scene, as explicit as it is, is anything but erotic.

Throughout, there is something glaringly off-putting, even before we discover Daisy’s fate. How does Gallo achieve this discomfort, especially for somebody who quite fancies Sevigny? First, there is the non-sensationalism of the cinematography (or lack thereof). No gratuitous close-ups and no heightened color filters, contrary to a pornographic film, which is filled with all sorts of sensationalized camerawork - whatever gets you off. I mentioned The Killing of a Chinese Bookie earlier - like that film's transgression of the thriller, the cinematography in Gallo's film is very flat with very few cuts. Also, the grain of the footage gives it an extra cinema verite-esque edge, as if we're voyeurs on extremely private lives. With the room’s distressingly blank walls that seem both claustrophobic and vast, there's an immense sense of vulnerability. During my most recent viewing, I took note of the blindingly bright light emanating from the ceiling, as if Bud is undergoing judgmental interrogation by some metaphysical force.

When all is said and done, however, the reasons for Bud’s inescapable melancholy is revealed: some time ago, while attending a party together, Daisy had been drugged and raped by a trio of men while she was passed out. Bud saw what happened, but did not intervene in anyway. Daisy ended up dying in the encounter, meaning we have been watching a figment of Bud’s imagination.

 This scene is painfully piercing, but what makes it work so well is not in being operatic or grandiose in the delivery of the twist as many films are (not necessarily a bad thing). The Brown Bunny, a film that is already quiet, feels disconcerting in this final scene due to the quiet intimacy that Bud and Daisy share – they speak in that limbo between whispering and regular volume, there are close-ups on gentle gestures (the image of Daisy’s hand caressing Bud’s hip has always been particularly haunting for me). Though there are tears shed by Bud, the film is almost acting like him – so many tears have been shed over time, so many wails exclaimed, thought the film wants to express this pain, there are physically no more tears to shed. I’ve always loved how the film plays like this.

I would like to take this moment to go back to the subject of pornography. Though I’m overgeneralizing, pornography usually serves alongside the act of masturbation as a means of substituting for real sexual interaction. In a sense, it is a means of curbing loneliness. Yet when the fantasy is over, the individual has only the loneliness he/she was curbing to return to.

Recently, I also noticed how little Bud actually makes eye contact with Daisy during the entire finale, so little that I thought I was going to note that he doesn't even make eye contact. But I watched closely just to make sure, and Bud indeed returns Daisy's loving and concerned glares. That said, though, Bud is still very hesitant in literally facing her. Many times, his vision is partially obscured by his hair that always finds itself in front of his point of view. Even when he is receiving fellatio, his eyes are less on Daisy than off in the distance. With Bud being the manifestation of one's shamed sexual fantasies in mind, this is further underlines his grief - by being afraid to even look at Daisy, he is afraid to, essentially, look at himself. She is, after all, all in his mind at this point.

The next morning, after the motel scene, Bud gets back in his van to continue on toward his next race, and the film closes on a freeze-frame. I’ve always found this freeze-frame particularly haunting, and I have an idea why. Going back to the metaphorical motorcycle race; when the film opens, in which we watch Bud take part in a race, we zoom in on him closer and closer, until it is only him in frame as he races in circles. He has lost this race, and is now bound for Los Angeles for the next race. It’s almost as if we’re watching a manifestation of the circles he races in his head, that being a desperate desire for Daisy to return, only to be reminded of the truth (like losing a race), rinse and repeat.

I’ve had much to say about The Brown Bunny for a very long time, and there you have it: my thoughts on one of my favorite independent films of the 21^st Century. I mean it when I say that I do understand why people are off-put by this film, but to call it one of the worst ever made is beyond hyperbole. I don’t want to sound patronizing to detractors at all, but what a shame that this film will be forever shrouded in its controversy. With that said, though, I take no shame in being the minority here: Michelangelo Antonioni’s landmark L’avventura had an equally chaotic Cannes screening, and that is now considered one of the greatest films ever made (which is also one of my all-time favorites). I doubt The Brown Bunny will ever be recognized on a platform as high as L'avventura. As much as I hate to be a pessimist, I will most likely be a minority on the subject of The Brown Bunny for the rest of my life. But it's a minority opinion I'm proud to hold.