Please contact us
with corrections
or breaking news
Avenging Angels Ride into Mill Valley by Doniphan Blair
A black cowgirl turns gunslinger in Britta Sjogren's 'Redemption Trail'. photo: courtesy B. Sjogren
AS PEACEFUL AS MARIN COUNTY MAY
be, two offering by local cineastes from the recent 36th Mill Valley Film Festival involve women who've had enough and turn to violence. Both are Westerns of sorts and both tackle distinctly Northern Californian issues.
"Redemption Trail", directed, written and produced by Britta Sjogren, with the assistance of Soumyaa Kapil Behrens in the latter chore, took a MVFF Audience Favorite and US Indie Award for good reason. It's a great -looking and -acted film about Sonoma County's "Wild West," its tensions with urban reality and diverse characters searching for space to heal.
Sjogren teaches film at SF State and has already indie-ed up—written/directed/produced—two previous features which won her a Guggenheim fellowship and awards at major festivals. But her "junior" (or third) outing is significantly more ambitious in terms of story, archetype investigation and the professional actors to play those parts.
Oakland flats (LisaGay Hamilton) and Oakland hills Anna (Lily Rabe) in a 'Redemption Trail' light moment. photo: courtesy B. Sjogren
Although her own daughter ably inhabits the ill-fated child, the central couple's husband, David, is well-rendered by Hamish Linklater, an up-and-coming television actor (notably "The Newsroom", 2013, and "The Good Wife", 2012-13). His wife Anna, an over-worked doctor, is nicely-played by Lily Rabe, who is on a similar career path ("American Horror Story", 2011-14, and bit parts on "Law and Order").
After a family tragedy that David and Anna are insufficiently grounded to absorb—perhaps due to their high-end hipster life in the Oakland Hills, which looks cool but might not be that deep—she takes to ground, literally.
Fleeing to the Sonoma Hills, she meets another Oaklander, Tess played by LisaGay Hamilton, one of the area's few black ranchers. But Tess is much more then that: she's also suffering, due to the loss of her father, a Black Panther, in the flats of Oakland, and packing. Indeed, she eventually becomes the avenging angel gunslinger.
A foggy day in the Sonoma hills with Britta Sjogren on location for 'Redemption Trail'. photo: courtesy B. Sjogren
Hamilton, who has done a lot of TV, notably "The Practice" (1997-2003), "Men of a Certain Age" (2009-2011) and "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" (2006-13), is a great spirit who ably brings to life a character which could have waxed cliche.
A caretaker (in more ways than one) to the hip English IT exec who owns the ranch, and periodically shows up with his daughter, Tess is a true genre-bending character in the Oakland Stammer mode. And when the time comes to avenge the rape of a friend's daughter by some local gangbangers, Tess is ready.
Alas, Sjogren is less so and the film glosses a well-motivated moment of violence that could have added depth and drama. Nevertheless, "Redemption Trail" is an ambitious and interesting investigation of N-Cali's unique dialectics: urban/rural, politically engaged/solitary healing, black/white, feminism/randy heterosexuality and acceptance/revenge.
Evil in the form of a messianic preacher (Jason Isaacs) versus Ed Harris's good sheriff in the Miller Brothers's 'Sweetwater'. photo: courtesy Miller Brothers
"Sweetwater", on the other hand, is a regular Western and rather enjoyable but its full frontal of its heroine's id, in a Peckinpah-esque finale, is its weak spot.
Although they now reside in Hollywood, and "Sweetwater" was shot in New Mexico and cut in New Orleans, it was created by the native sons Noah and Logan MIller, twins now 27. With their long-hair and laconic smiles, they appear to personify Northern California's easy living—not.
In fact, they grew up on the dark side of Marin County with an alcoholic father, played intensely by Ed Harris in their masterful freshman film, the autobiographical "Breaking Home", which astounded Bay Area audiences as well as film folks when it debuted at MVFF in 2008.
Unfortunately, it wasn't well-served by the festival's distribution wing and didn't find the audience it deserved. But it was duly noted in Hollywood where "The Bros," as they are sometimes known, made the tricky transition to professionals, notably as screenwriters but also directors, a credit they share on "Sweetwater", despite the single listing of Logan due to some sort of regulation.
Indeed, that part of their story is almost as interesting as their tough upbringing covered in "Breaking Home". After betting on becoming baseball players but failing, they were depressed, broke and living in Tuscon until they took up a friend on the invitation to come crash on his LA floor.
January Jones, of 'Mad Men' fame, decides she can dish just as much as she can take. photo: courtesy Miller Brothers
The rest is, well, their history. By sheer force of will—without even knowing how to type, let alone having a college or film school eduction, or making a short film—they inhaled the art of filmmaking, storytelling and even acting, largely from books, friends and avid watching.
As if to form a continuity from "Breaking Home", they appear in "Sweetwater", but only the beginning, when they are summarily dispatched by the messianic cowboy, the Prophet Josiah played to utmost evil perfection by Jason Isaacs who was Lucius Malfoy in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" (2011).
Ed Harris is with us again but this time as a light and quirky, dance-moving and poetry-spouting gunslinger—another insufficiently explored archetype that back-easters have never heard of, despite the fact they gave us country/western music and the West's laissez-faire liberalism not to mention its romance.
Although a flawed film largely panned at this year's Sundance, where it debuted, I found "Sweetwater"'s first two-thirds excellent and evocative, often of the masterful "El Topo" (Jodorosky, 1970), which The Bros say they love, one of their film's few predecessors in the messianic cowboy-genre.
Indeed, the mystic macho, typified by the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, is another classic Northern California conundrum in need of the exploration achieved in "Sweetwater". Although many thought it began with Charles Manson and concluded with Jim Jones, such god-intoxicated evil has been in the West since the beginning.
The Millers (Noah, cnt, Logan, rt) are friends with 'Fruitvale Station' director Ryan Coogler (lft), the perfect team to tackle a post-modern Oakland Western. photo: D. Blair
The Millers also nailed dead the convoluted syntax of the 19th century and the theme of early forensics explored by Harris' sheriff character.
But the fighting female final fell flat due to Jones apparent deadpan but also the script. "Why can't women be mass murders like men?" I heard someone arguing upon exiting. Well, aside from the fact that over nine out of ten killers are men, it didn't make dramatic sense, which is the only law filmmakers must abide.
A great narrative moment does occur when the Prophet Josiah is coming after Jones' avenging angel not to kill her but woo her into wedlock, providing a fabulous patriarchal-matriachal duel-to-the-death opportunity. She could have entered his honeytrap and engaged in a Hitchcockian psycho-subterfuge before slowly and frighteningly finishing him herself.
Despite Jimmy Cliff's appeal, "I shot the sheriff but I did not shoot no deputy," she cold-bloodily kills all Josiah's brainwashed henchmen but leaves the termination of the prophet himself to Harris who has just escaped a visually stunning, reverse crucifixion.
Still, "Sweetwater" shows great creativity and cowboy-poet filmmaking, hence, the Miller Bros promise of much more on their junior outing.