SCREEN GEMS

Prince Avalanche is one of my most anticipated films this year.

It was almost going to happen at this year’s Little Rock Film Festival but things fell apart. I’m blaming the studio but I don’t know all the particulars.

I do know that for a long while I thought it would be a year or so before I found it on Netflix or at a bargain bin at Walgreens. The lazily paced dramedy starring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch as two road workers camping out all summer in the late ’80s in Texas after a massive forest fire is the latest from (Little Rock-born) director David Gordon Green.

I’ve had an affinity for Green ever since his excellent backwoods Southern Gothic tale Undertow (2004). Afterward, I found the equally inspired All the Real Girls (2003) and George Washington(2000). After Green’s dark dramatic adaptation of Snow Angels (2007), he set a course for more comedic adult fare with Pineapple Express (2008).

His experience on that film must have hit a nerve because he switched his trajectory of character-based rural dramas to raunchy ‘‘pot’’ and booze comedies like “medieval-stoner-comedy” Your High-ness (2011) or directing and executive producing HBO’s Eastbound & Down for frequent collaborator Danny McBride. His other 2011 film, The Sitter, was almost the last straw - but the Prince Avalanche trailer seemed to suggest the creative and exciting spark that made Green’s characters embrace awkwardly in the middle of a bowling alley lane for no reason in All the Real Girls was back. (OK, in a way it never left. His projects still have their interesting touches and trademark improvisational feel, it’s just that his character-based work in his earlier films occasionally rivals that of his sometimes producer and mentor Terrence Malick.)

A lot of critics will call Avalanche a “return to form”or hail the film as a callback to his earlier work but I’d have to argue that it’s still somewhere in the middle of his indie and Hollywood careers. Rudd and Hirsch carry the film, with great opposingchemistry onscreen and deft balance between the more absurdist comedic moments (a couple of chase scenes with large wrenches come to mind) and the smaller, more subtle human touches. They are the best thing about the film and weirdly what makes the film ultimately not work for me so much.

As much as I love the actors, I can see them too clearly instead of the characters. Casting two unknowns would have been a more interesting approach and probably push the believability of the characters. The reality is that if Green had gone with two unrecognizable faces, the film probably wouldn’t have seen the light of day and I can’t think of anyone better than Rudd or Hirsch for these characters. The best scene in the film involves Rudd talking to a woman who is siftingthrough the ashes of her burned house. She has to be a real person going through this situation because her performance is so raw and unprompted and she elicits an exemplary performance from Rudd, who is honestly affected by her story of trying to find her pilot’s license.It’s the best scene in the film because capturing those real moments is what Green does best. I just would have preferred a lot more of them.

Levi Agee is a ÿlmmaker and programmer for the Little Rock Film Festival. Write him at [email protected]

MovieStyle, Pages 29 on 08/16/2013

Upcoming Events