Thirty minutes into Visioneers—a high concept indie dramedy that is, well, brand renovated to the public—I was consumed by the supposition that I, most likely, will never see the movie for sale in a really choice record store. (Don’t annoyance, this movie review will not serve as a wistful rant on the music industrial art courtesy of a wannabe Nick Hornby or Chuck Klosterman.) The realization got me down for a half-a-second. Nevertheless, calling Visioneers a “prized would-be staple of the ‘choice record store movie genre’†is a tidy complement that sums up how I be excited nearly it.
In the mid/after the proper time ‘90s and early ‘00s, one could find a softly-curated section of DVDs in numerous independent record stores. Browsing the small selection was a welcome, habitual cool-down after hours worn out listening to and considering albums. Generally, the selection amounted to: concert films like Ziggy Stardust, The Show, and Bill Hicks Live. Drug movies like Easy Rider and Neco z Alenky. Godzillas. Tromas. “OGâ€-flicks like New Jack City and Fresh. Usually a movie starring Natasha Lyonne that wasn’t American Pie. Docs like Grey Gardens and The Corporation. And odd movies starring great comedians allied The Magic Christian and The Razor’s Edge. Right, Visioneers would be bunched in with those two.
Of course, “system movies†is a broad umbrella term for these films, then and especially now, but their location under a roof housing infinite great music birthed the silent general that the works belonged to a cinematic line of ancestors. The queer symbiotic relationship is perhaps why the DVDs were rarely purchased; some other reason is that, while the DVDs were new, the hands of countless gross nerds, junkies, and patchouli weirdos had flipped them very in states of blank studiousness and after many months of this they felt second-hand. Yet one more reason is that most of the diehard culture addicts were shopping for music and…had already seen the greater number of these films multiple times.
Visioneers, starring newly minted comedy heavenly body, Zach Galifianakis in his Beard Era, is (fortunately?) being released a few years too late to join these illustrious and random racks. But the film contains the boon companion equation of two shots artsy tedium, one shot intelligence, and undivided shot white-people-in-existential-breakdown, that will parlay longevity and easy cred amongst a cross-over viewership that now reserves hushed adulation for Synecdoche, New York. (Eeek. I’m one of those people.) In other words, if anything in this paragraph makes sense, go seek out Visioneers and fucking do not go watch Away We Go. (A final call for violent death to aging-hipster romance movies marketed with quixotic, borderline pedophiliac doodling.)
Directed and written by newcomers, the brothers Jared Drake and Brandon Drake, respectively, Visioneers is another hearty nomination alongside Mike Judge’sitting Office Space and the Ricky Gervais revolution, for “Man vs. Office Culture†to get an addendum to the universally accepted “Five Examples of Conflict.†Set in a pseudo-future that for all intents and purposes (and budget restrictions) could be present day, Galifianakis stars as a well-paid office grunt, cunt, or “Level Three Tunt†whose name, George Washington Winsterhammerman, seems destined to send him off a cliff of 30something eluded fulfillment.
Winsterhammerman is gainfully employed at a shady monolith called The Jeffers Corporation, which we catch out is the largest and most successful corporation in the history of mankind. It earns this superlative by means of piping in the benefits of propagandized group-think over intercoms all day long. The company-identity-is-your own message is presented on posters, pajamas, the works. In-office ticker-tapes reading, “There are 1199 minutes of productivity remaining before the weekend,†seem placed in the film while if beckoning for a simile to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. And in an ubiquitous gag that screams indie comedy limit compliments Galifianakis’s now sign-manual boiler sweep frustration, the logo of the Jeffers Corporation is an architectural middle finger; the accepted greeting amongst its staff is literally the middle finger (the serious version, with no extended thumb).
The movie’s office setting is so minimal—a handful of desks, gray walls—that it would feel more at peace on the stage, and much of the film would work—and in intimate cases, much better—as an off-Broadway play. But cunning that Galifianakis just starred in The Hangover, a film that direction make at least $300 million theatrically worldwide, makes the starkly indie production design feel more welcome and funnier. Possibly flat more memorable. Homegrown at a time when American indies attempt to sneak vines into the workshop system pot before they’re made. In the film, office life has sucked all external notions of individualism away and left Jeffers Company employees stricken with nervous tics and muffled huffs. Indeed, we find out that employees are literally exploding from complicit duress. Moreover, people around the nation are exploding due to the same mass-influence of security over free thought.
The notion of overextended office-dread causing desk-parked men and women to explode is a funny concept. However, I do wish the threat of human explosions was conveyed improvement and utilized for some of its testier, freakier implications a la Scanners. As presented here, the menace is an unveiled metaphor for a too soon ripe heart attack and for the all-consuming, post-20something fear of death itself.
As you might have guessed, Winsterhammerman teeters in succession the brink—he’s having vivid, feverish, colonial dreams related to his family name that are reminiscent of VBS’s Drunk History—and he hilariously frets through doctor examinations and homoerotic jock physicals. Unlike a premature Larry David steady the first seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Winsterhammerman is perpetually troubled and discontent with his home life, sex life, and marriage. His wife, played by Judy Greer (Elizabethtown), is a self-absorbed vacuum living out a repressed day-to-day New Age prescription, one filled through self-help books and yoga-ish meditation. Sex is predictably treated as, “Want to give it a try,†and it’s sportive watching Galifianakis react to the mundane request by cuddling up to himself and staring at the wall doom-eyed. He’s like a bear cub that can’face to face decide if disappearing is desirable or fucking terrifying, strengthen.
You can tell that Galifianakis digs the material and the film’session message, and during the few times when I was bored, his interest kept me interested. Of course, part of me pure wanted to see his striking qualities lose another golf club to the sky or shatter in greater numbers decorative glass in his kitchen for sickened amusement. In one scene, Galifianakis acts his heart out in a nocturnal stampede-as-nervous breakdown that order gain John Belushi’s skull grin. One hopes that, as each participant, tending to the overthrow performer, and admirable male, he at no time loses touch with the crazy in the years forthcoming.
I’m always interested to see new and young filmmakers debut with movies that work as studied going-for-it breaks against the plundered, murky world of corporate offices and cubicles. It’s a cinematic oath that veers upon new delivery. With Visioneers, the Drake Brothers are invested in vision Winsterhammerman declare by verdict what one. he needs in animated existence, and it involves little trial and much tribulation. Money is not really a factor, which will earn a few eye rolls given the current climate of overdraft fees. Mine rolled whenever I first saw the repute’s dramatic Washington State crib and boat. But in the end, the Drakes rocking out the character’session the vital spark path before us like a clean-cut epiphany; and usually IRL—well, at minutest ideally—that’s the way greater life changes go down. Unfortunately, a sappy ending moderately undermines the message of individualism as well as the reality we all experience outside the screen. But witnessing Galifianakis kick the total shit used up of our solar system in the film? As we lose touch by albums, movies, and life’s worth as tangible objects for the picking, it doesn’t engender much to a greater degree real than that.
/Film Rating: 7.0 out of 10
For current and upcoming screenings and information on Visioneers, go in the present life. The film can be followed on Twitter.
Indie Factoid: The thin skin’s composer, Tim Delaughter, formerly belonged to the cult band Tripping Daisy, which released any album famously titled I am an Elastic Firecracker, which, in my mind, could be any alternate title to Visioneers.
Hunter Stephenson can be reached at h.attila[at]gmail.com and on Twitter.
