United States of Leland

 

Picture: B     Sound: B+     Extras: C     Program: B-

 

 

The United States of Leland misses its mark by something like, oh, four or five years.  Thanks to the overrated nonsense of American Beauty, a veritable wave of suburban dystopian tales took hold at the multiplex.  Entries like Igby Goes Down, Donnie Darko, In the Bedroom, The Good Girl, Life as a House, Far From Heaven (even if it takes place in the melodramatic fifties), Elephant and even something like Saved, which was more about the lunacy of religion yet was still tinged with the yawns of suburbia, all resulted from the successes of American Beauty.

 

So it’s no real surprise to see Kevin Spacey in Leland, one of the most recent—and let’s hope last—suburban nightmare pictures, albeit in a more reduced role in front of the camera and as producer behind it.  The surprise, though, is how ultimately bland the film is.  The characters’ motivations never venture into any new territory and the plot likewise never makes inroads into uncharted waters.  But that isn’t the case throughout the entire film.  Very early on and for, like, 20 minutes, there’s a chance this could be a clever little mystery wrapped in the shroud of that suburban nightmare. Alas, that hope dies fast—and with close to an hour left in the film, things get messy.

 

Leland P. Fitzgerald (Ryan Gosling) is one of those kids who’s an introvert.  His parents don’t really understand him, he doesn’t seem to have many friends and he lies listlessly, restless in his bedroom contemplating the big “What does it all mean?” question of life.  So when an autistic boy is found stabbed 20 times and Leland turns up with an exceptionally bloody hand, he’s arrested for the murder but everyone is, naturally, shaken from their consumerist slumber, forced to ask themselves, “What does it all mean?”

 

Looks like Leland was ahead of the curve on that one.

 

What follows is, supposedly, an exploration into the events, how the characters got to where they are in the film and why all of this is happening—even though Leland pronounces, over and over again in his slow, muddles inflection, that this isn’t really about the “why?”

 

Okie dokie.

 

In the story that plays out, we meet Pearl (Don Cheadle), a struggling writer who works as a teacher in the correctional hospital Leland is sent to, Leland’s famous writer-father, Albert (Spacey), Leland’s junkie one-time girlfriend and the sister of the autistic victim, Becky (Jenna Malone, who seems to pop up in this type of film like clockwork), her family—father Harry, mother Ann, sister Julie (Michelle Williams), and Julie’s live-in boyfriend Allen (Chris Klein)—Leland’s mother, Pearl’s mistress, Leland’s facility-mates and a few other side characters here and there.  It looks like the tangled web of Robert Altman is at work here, but don’t be fooled: there is little to no interconnection between these characters and an even smaller connection between them and the audience.

 

The film itself unfurls in a way that provides little character growth, much psychotherapeutical babbling and far, far too much angst.  And despite a few genuinely entertaining and moving moments—every scene, brief as they may be, between Spacey and Cheadle; Klein’s character’s arc; a moment on an airplane when Spacey corrects the grammar on a magazine advert then plays with the head of a kindly old lady—Leland is little more than an exercise in the horrors of the Lynchian suburbs everyone seems to live in these days.  And, let’s face it, if you have so much time on your hands to ponder how everyone seems to be sad but can’t—or won’t—realize it, how people pray and cry too much or how someone’s eyes have lost the reflective electricity you feel in a city, then you my friend, are certainly living a nightmarish existence and may God have mercy on your soul.  If there is such a thing as God, right?

 

That’s just one complaint in a list that could occupy way too much time than this film really, at the end, deserves.

 

Where Leland could have been redeemed was in the extras on its DVD.  A commentary here, behind-the-scenes exploration there could help get across the intentions of the writer(s), director and actors.  And in this case, those could have helped first-time writer-director Matthew Ryan Hoge explain what his muddled mess is supposed to amount to.

 

But, unfortunately, nothing of the sort is to be found on the disc.  Besides a trailer for Leland and previews for a gaggle of other films and DVDs, there are no extras to speak of, doing this potentially decent film a great disservice.

 

Visually, the film looks great. The enhanced 16:9 image is crisp and clean, bringing out the blues and greens of the outdoors, the reds and oranges of Leland’s outfits and the harsh realities of pre-fab housing and cul-de-sacs are rendered beautiful here.  Similarly, the sound is rich and textured.  Leland is a dialogue-driven piece; so don’t look for huge, explosive action set pieces.  But if the inner conundrums of existentialism could make a loud bang, those explosions would POP on this disc.

 

Overall, this is one for the rental list.  Check out Leland if you enjoyed American Beauty; just don’t expect the same sort of payoff.  They’re similar projects, but without the omnipresent Spacey that exists in Beauty, The United States of Leland is reduced to civil war—one that even the brilliant acting of Cheadle can’t stop.

 

 

-   Dante A. Ciampaglia