David O'ConnellThe United States of Leland
September 24th 2010 05:21
Noble intentions and a stellar cast can’t offset the plentiful shortcomings of writer-director Matthew Ryan Hoge’s second, and to date, most recent feature. Replete with interconnected characters in an Arizona suburb, The United States of Leland (2004) tells the strangely unmoving tale of a 16 year old who inexplicably commits a heinous crime, stabbing his ex-girlfriend’s autistic younger brother to death with twenty swift strokes. Leland P. Fitzgerald (Ryan Gosling) is a seemingly simple, aloof teenager with a troubled background. He seeks neither to hide his crime or explain it.
Waves of grief are experienced by the families involved, including the ex-girlfriend, Becky (Jena Malone) who turns, destructively, to drugs and the music of The Pixies; her sister, Julie (Michelle Williams) who is paralyzed by grief; Julie's well-intentioned live-in boyfriend Allen (Chris Klein), and the devastated parents (Martin Donovan and Ann Magnuson).
On the other side is Leland’s mother Marybeth (Lena Olin) and his literary hotshot, arsehole of an absent father forced to jet in from Italy, Albert (Kevin Spacey). These characters revolve in their own little worlds trying to make sense of the needless waste of life. Meanwhile, the focal point of a hardly remorseful Leland’s life becomes detention-centre teacher Pearl (Don Cheadle), a frustrated, aspiring writer, who in delving into the mystery of Leland spies a literary opportunity of his own.
The emotionless Leland is a hard character to get a grip on. The film skips backwards in time to pare back the rocky course of Leland and Becky’s relationship. Clearly he’s always been an unusual boy with a unique worldview, left to fend for himself by a narcissistic father. In one of the less credible developments we see a flashback in which a young Leland is altruistically taken in by a wealthy family as he sits forlornly in a cinema with his duffle bags. The mother (Sherilyn Fenn) becomes an especially significant figure in shaping his life. But ultimately this peculiar boy is only able to perceive the sadness of the world.
Hoge’s ensemble piece is ultimately crushed by the weight of its own ambition. Is it a profound statement about desensitised, alienated lives? Almost the opposite in fact; Leland’s voiceover narration, in reflections of the diary he writes whilst held in custody, acts as our guide to his subconscious but it falls woefully short of illumination. Too often his trite reflections feel more juvenile than insightful. You could almost see Gosling’s detached performance as a distant cousin to his equally stripped down role in Lars and the Real Girl (1997), except without the homicidal tendency!
It’s all too easy to conclude that some things in life, include crimes, defy rational explanation. Here are the juicy background details with all the clues laid out, Hoge seems to be saying - now you theorise about why all this leads to a certain event randomly strewn amongst millions of others. It's a cop-out and undermines any attempt to find closure for the people whose lives become entangled in the wake of sudden death.
This jumbled, erratic, overly self-conscious film fails to fit its many unwieldy elements into a cohesive whole. As usual it’s Cheadle who steals the acting stakes and though there’s no lack of talent alongside him, many of the supporting roles prove thankless and fatally underwritten. Spacey, who acted as producer and apparently championed the film, is given such a paucity of substance to work with that it defies belief how and why he ever became involved. His character suffers from a greater affliction that finally sinks The United States of Leland into the quagmire of forgotten features: lack of credibility. His laughable diction into a hand-held recorder as he pulls up near his ex-wife's house is a pretentious lowpoint. Roge strains hard to create a complex world of adult emotions but he comes up short in nearly every way. The fact that he's never made another film comes as no great surprise.
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I like Malone a lot too Matt, she doesn't come out the worse for wear here but neither does she entirely avoid the taint of an aroma that washes out none too quickly.
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
As I read the review it came back tome. needless to say the film is forgettable despite the strong cast.
I really like Gosling too. Lars and the Real Girls blew me away. His performance in The Believer was one of the most powerful in recent years...he also did a lot to make the generic sounding Half Nelson a rich film.