I’ve got a great idea! Let’s—you and me—make a movie. We’ll get a camera and go around until we’ve shot enough film to fill, say, 87 minutes. It doesn’t really matter what we film, it could be a kid getting off a school bus or dead possums by the side of the road. You can film me sleeping, and I’ll film you smoking and watching television. I’ll focus on the tv for a few minutes, and you keep changing the channels so people will have to guess what our statement is. We can edit it in a Cuisinart and enter it in film festivals. Of course, we’re going to have to come up with a quirky name, like Killing Cupcakes in Time for Yom Kippur. You in?
Devil Come to Hell and Stay Where You Belong is a folie à deux from filmmakers Massimilian and Nina Breeder. It allegedly documents a couple’s trip from New York to California, starting at the end of the trip in Grand Isle, LA. So…a non-linear documentary that jumps back and forth between locations. There is no dialogue (it’s unfair to expect a review to have more words than there are in a script).
The film is a compilation of scenes that are related only by the two people—the Breeders—in them. A buffalo walks down the road at Yellowstone. Waves break at Big Sur. There’s lots of walking on beaches, up hills, through fields, all with the wind blowing through their hair. There are close-ups of dead animals by the side of the road, covered with flies, and live seals on the beach, covered with flies. People look at the seals and take pictures. Do you know how weird seals sound when they’re beached?
We see Nina snapping photos of a dead deer; Nina and Massimilian attend some races, watch television, engage in sex, and boat on a lake. There are motel signs, motel doors, gas stations. Are we just seeing random images or is there a theme here that I’m not deep enough to appreciate? There are scenes that are haunting because they are unexplained. The couple climb a hill of something—shale, ash, what? There are close-ups of her scratching and him shaving, but neither are as interesting as the screen going dark which it frequently does.
Article comments
1 - Marcos Ortega
Miss Bob Etier,finally a direct opinion!
I really liked your review. You just need to improve your English and maybe study a little bit of cinema history and cinema language before writing a blog... but you'll get there!
I have seen this movie at Anthology Film Archive in NY and I had the same opinion until I discovered the conceptual structure behind this film... and I have to say, I had to change my mind.
You just have to be patient and put a little bit more effort in the understanding of contemporary art... and the whole world will open up for you.
Related with this title I suggest you to see: The Brown Bunny, Electroma, Twentynine Palms and some of the Herzog's films in US.
Good luck with your writing!