Cyrus.

Quietly, amid the flurry of Toy Story 3 and Last Airbender conversations, the Duplass brothers became the first writers/directors from the hardcore independent group of American filmmakers self-named the mumblecorers to release a bona fide movie with John C. Reilly and Catherine Keener as its cornerstones. I'd been anticipating this achievement for a while now, this breakthrough of new and adventurous young talent into the stale fabric of contemporary mainstream-indie cinema. I assumed it'd be good, I don't know, maybe a lot of us did.

I throw around that Borges quote which goes "Madame Bovary is realistic, Hitler isn't" because it reminds me of the limitations of believable absurdity and too the synthetic naturalness of fiction. Or like, simply, fiction can be easier to believe than reality. I try to keep it in mind when I watch a narrative unfold, and I look for perhaps moments in which the filmmakers are reflecting not fictional conventions but organic nonconformity. Because I believe in the validity of this concept and seek out its manifestations, part of what's been so riveting about recent American indies for me has been their allowance of ugly moments, bad people, and wrong turns. Some say this is reckless abandonment of effective creative tools and it's possible to justify truly poor creative choices by enveloping the work in a mist of freedom, and accuse the mumblecorers of being lazy at best or irresponsible at worst. I see it as creative asceticism and think it's great. There have been enough of these films now, too, to be able to tell both that indeed conscious and formal deviations are taking place, and that there are huge variations in the levels of talent.

The Duplass brothers haven't demonstrated an extraordinary talent to tower them above their peers, but until this film I always thought they were honest. Or that's kind of bullshit; tell you the truth I'd only seen their Puffy Chair prior to this. So I thought Puffy Chair was honest. I don't think Cyrus is honest. What's interesting to me is the shape of its failure, and the way certain contradictions form by considering the film through a prism of honesty and asceticism. First of all there has been a lot of criticism here in Portland about the lack of depth given to the female characters in the film - which again I stand opposed to the Portland film majority, because I think there are only single dimensional characters in the film, period. What these people probably mean is that the females, Keener and Tomei, are the objects of the story, but as characters they are hardly allowed to affect the narrative, and I'd agree and say that is one of the film's problems. Though I think they're lucky to be saved from the idiocy of the struggle between Hill and Reilly.

Second of all, there is the idiocy of Hill and Reilly, and more specifically, there is the enormous and unforgivable idiocy of Reilly. This is the contradiction I referred to - because in Cyrus there are the raw moments of emotional revelation that I first complimented the Duplass brothers for, but there is a lack of character depth that prohibits me from experiencing the force or range of these moments. So I ask them to make their film in a way they feel truthful, and then I criticize them for skimping on character design. Reilly plays the now popular manchild role, and though it's easy to mistake his dimensions as more authentic because the camera is hand held and the settings are homes and apartments, there isn't more to him than the manchild Dewey Cox, or the manchild Ron Burgundy.

His manchildness generates unearned sympathy from the audience. It's a dramatic shortcut, the kind I expected the Duplass brothers to eschew. It also forces the character to behave inconsistently, because the Duplass brothers like to have both scenes of comedic simplicity and scenes of introspection and emotional resonance. "Shawn, inconsistency itself is a huge component of reality, and earlier you referred to the absurdity of reality and expressed contempt for the dishonest veneer of dramatic form." That's a great point, but I didn't mean to say that a piece of work shouldn't have an inner logic. Without an inner logic, it's difficult for me to enter into the film and discover the broken passages and fragmented realms of the film's characters. Right?

The film plays the notes of a sincere drama, and at its core is a complex, interesting dilemma, but it plays the drama and the dilemma without exploring the characters. The plot is like an ice cream truck moving down the street and the characters are like children in the street who chase after it, wildly gesticulating for attention. Everything has a dramatic function, which makes this not a more honest drama, but simply a different type of lie. And when I say lie I mean there's a disconnect between me and the film that leads to mistrust on my end, because of course all films are lies, but the good ones don't remind you of this.