“The Tracy Fragment” is a very demanding film; you would have to completely commit yourself to its cause. Most of you will invariably find it irritating. Some will say it is an unwatchable film. I will say it is a very brave and a pretty good film. I liked it; I was challenged by it. By now, you might be interested: why is it ‘unwatchable’ or ‘irritating’?
The movie not only follows a scrambled chronology and fragmented narrative (is that surprising anymore?), it uses split-screen on virtually every frame. The result is a challenging visual kaleidoscope: the viewer effectively faces as many as eight different images at once [watch the pictures here to get an idea]. It demands an active participation too: you would have to piece the fragments together and create a meaning out of it. It is undeniable that most viewers will not be prepared to face such a challenge; some will ask why they should even try. Well, I can give you an answer, it will be up to you whether you accept this or not. See, we all have different tastes of books, -- given a chance, some will read Dickens while I will read Joyce. Now, I cannot really criticize someone for choosing Dickens over Joyce (however, if one chooses Mills & Boons or Anne Rice over Joyce, I will accuse him/her of puerile taste); I can only tell him/her that he/she is missing something really great. Sometimes, to experience great things, you need to first cross difficult hurdles. It holds true to all art forms, including cinema. There are levels of film-watching: you have to graduate from one to another, just like school. You may refuse to try; the one that will lose out is you. However, a more relevant question is whether the film is worth that much of attention. This is a vital question, and we will come to that later.
Although “The Tracy Fragment” uses split-screen throughout its 77 minutes, it is not as maddeningly art-house as Andy Warhol’s “Chelsea Girls” proved to be. It has a palpable story, characters, and events. The film is a cinematic monologue delivered by the protagonist, 15-year old Tracy Berkowitz (played by the one-and-only Ellen Page). The fragmented narrative and the split-screen technique are analogous to the literary strategy of Stream-of-Consciousness. The film does not differentiate between the truths from the lies or exaggerations Tracy is fabricating, and leaves the decision to the viewer. For example, Tracy’s parents seem a bit theatrical and too cruel to be true, but then, it might be the way Tracy is projecting them. Every image is subjective here; they can be interpreted in thousand ways. But, before we go any further, I will quote the gist of the plot from Wikipedia ------ “15-year-old Tracey Berkowitz is naked under a tattered shower curtain at the back of a bus, looking for her little brother Sonny, who thinks he's a dog. Tracey's journey leads us into the dark underbelly of the city, into the emotional cesspool of her home, through the brutality of her high school (because she is flat-chested, everybody calls her “It”. ---Author.), the clinical cat and mouse games with her shrink and her soaring fantasies of Billy Zero - her boyfriend and Rock 'n' Roll savior. Her travels also put her in contact with the seedier inhabitants of the city. Like Lance, her would-be savior who ultimately puts her life in jeopardy. Tracey's stories begin to intertwine truth with lies, and hope with despair as we move closer to the truth of Sonny's disappearance.” I am quoting from Wikipedia here because it almost gives you no concrete inkling about what the film might be, whereas, I often tend to spoil a bit too much information here. The film is an adaptation from the novel of the same name by Maureen Medved (she wrote the script too). However, veteran Canadian Indy maverick Bruce McDonald makes something purely cinematic out of an evidently average teenage story. By his split-screen narrative strategy, McDonald, to a large extent, manages to eschew catharsis; what interests more is the movement of Tracy’s psyche than the tragedy of her life (as she herself is responsible for most of them). However, the biggest weakness of the film lies in its weak script.
Even the innovative narrative structure and brilliant acting fails to hide the paucity of good script material. The basic story is all too common, with embellishments typical of those teenager-y books that the young ones prefer so much. There are certain episodes in the film -------- like the episode with a crow, and where Tracy encounters a druggy woman who claims she has been robbed -------- that are completely unnecessary and not brilliant in itself. Some try to establish a completely uncalled-for and trashy sympathy for the main character. Evidently, these weaknesses stem from the script (can you deny a novelist who is also writing the script?); but, still by large, despite the occasional MTV-ish-ness, the film-maker manages to overcome such puerility through his cinematic narrative (didn’t Godard once say that bad novels are exceptionally good material for good cinema?). What we confront on the screen is a kaleidoscope of mental-images (not images of mental state, but an image that functions as explanatory conjunctions like “like”, “because”, “as” etc. A simple portrayal of mental state would have been affection-image or action-image) that reveals the complexity of psyche, the terrible game that goes on inside us between guilt and self-delusion. The film does not present a closured meaning, but offers us free interpretations. In this respect, this is an oppositional cinema that challenges the ‘let-me-tell-you-a-story’ tradition of classical Hollywood films. It is extremely brave in its oppositional nature; more films like this might mean the ultimate redemption from the despicable redundancy of contemporary mainstream films. It is a flawed film, but it is worthy of judicious applause and appreciation.
Another weak point is the ending. It is hard to end a film like this, and the ending does seem a bit simple, and quite inadequate. Again, we must blame the script.
There is something deeply obnoxious about this film. Except Tracy, almost every other character is blown a bit too large. A linear reading will come to the conclusion that the film fails to portray the characters believably. But look closely, and you will realize that whatever you are seeing is the projection of Tracy’s mind, tainted by her angst, frustrations, and attitudes. Nothing that you see onscreen is just what you see, but a hint at that thing that lurks at the background, that what is not on the screen. It is a game you have to play with this film; without the game, you will not grasp a thing. I truly enjoyed playing it.
The film is almost entirely shot with handheld HD and 35mm cameras; the color scheme is largely blue and gray, with a few, occasional bursts of orange and red. The wintry mise-en-scene is very, very bleak, so bleak that it might make your heart feel like a particularly heavy stone. The shooting for this film was done in only about 19 days, but the post-production (mainly editing) went on for nearly nine months! To achieve the kaleidoscopic effect, McDonald employed three editors who contributed their individual versions that were then integrated into the split-screen frames. The background score is especially worth a mention. Scored by the Canadian Indy rock group Broken Social Scene, the soundtrack features Peaches, The FemBots, Rose Melberg, and a particularly beautiful track by Patti Smith.
There are two things that work for this movie, --- the director, Bruce McDonald, and the lead actor, Ellen Page. I know I am repeating my statements here, and you might think I am a gormless fan of her, but Ellen Page is a frightening genius. She is only twenty-one, and already she has made at least three movies that stand their ground only because Page has triumphantly managed to carry them through (Hard Candy, Juno, The Tracy Fragments, and I have heard that she has given yet another amazing performance in the film “An American Crime”). I am challenging you; --- show me another actress in last ten years who has managed to accomplish what Page has managed to do. When most female actors look to do Hollywood teen comedies, and so-called soulful ones, she has bravely got into the world of Indy film-making, and has been creating strong, dynamic characters that go through the hell-est of hells. Even in Juno, I noticed something flinty, cut-off-thy-balls in her eyes; ----- it seems she is hell-bent on taking up the most impossible of challenges she can possibly find. Not aided by the evidently weak script, she puts every ounce of her soul into the character of Tracy. Watch her scowl, growl, curse, cry, deliver deadpan monologues, and watch how subtly she conveys anguished guilt. There is something of the young Brando in her: the sheer force of their performances is enough to take your breath away. No one can predict the vicissitudes of fate, but if she manages to go at this rate, she will surely be hailed as one of the greatest of all time. She is trying new things too; --- after this impressive bunch of angst-ridden teen characters, she has signed up to portray Jane Eyre, an obvious attempt to venture into more nuanced and understated acting. She is already by far the best actress of her generation, even when we keep in mind such talented ones like Natalie Portman and Julia Stiles. Hopefully, Hollywood would not be too ‘aroused’ by her; she is not a ‘beauty’ by any standards. Good for us.
This film opened the Panorama section of the 57th Berlinale, and it gathered mixed applause from critics at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. It is being distributed in USA by THINKFilms, and was released on May 9, 2008. “The Tracy Fragments” is also revolutionary in one aspect; right after its theatrical release, the film-makers released the rush footages of the film on the net so that viewers can download them and edit them into their own films. This is a first, and obviously it will meet a lot of paranoia from critics over-worried about authorship. However, I personally feel it is a great move, a truly brave move that acknowledges the importance of viewer participation in building cinematic narratives, and happily affirms the multiplicity of the medium. Truly, “The Tracy Fragments” is a worthy postmodern (I am using this word as a time-frame as well as an epistemological era) film, despite its faults. I am happy I have watched this film, and I will hope (however vainly) for more such brave and honest experiments.
I will award this film a 4, its weak points being the script, the conclusion, and slight slips that hurt.
In my previous entry, I was talking about the advent of a new genre. The significance of films like “The Tracy Fragments” lays in the fact that the filmmakers are finally liberating this genre from the iron grip of Hollywood. There is tremendous potential in this genre, and it might prove to be a refreshing change for world cinema (as I have commented before in the entry about “Elephant”).
In my next entry, I will be reviewing “Fracture” (Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling).
BAIDURYA CHAKRABARTI
1 comment:
Yout first few lines were enough to convince me that i need to watch this movie. i like watching obscure movies, movies that challenge my faculty.Whether i finally end up liking that movie of course a different story altogether. Allmovie.com (a site a often take advice from before getting hold of a movie) calls the movie "21st century variation on The Catcher in the Rye". That has further fueled my interest.
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