Twixt: The Great Eulogy
Francis Ford Coppola becomes egoless and creates what is one of cinemas finest digital achievements.
In Twixt, there's a scene where Hall Baltimore (Val Kilmer) is trying to write an outline for his new book. He sits there and chugs whiskey as writer's block sets in. Baltimore becomes increasingly deranged, scratching at his neck, talking about how basketball players from the '60s wore short shorts to jump higher, and doing silly little voices—the groovy score sells this as decidedly comedic, even if you're watching a man quickly lose his mind. It's a specific moment of tonal inconsistency in a tonally inconsistent movie that, right now, as I try to write about this film, feels purposefully mocking. There are multiple scenes like this where Coppola seems to wink at his critics (lines like "But it's gotta have a lot of story; it can't have a lot of that style bullshit"), but it's here, when his protagonist becomes so critical of his own work that he's got to take drugs and dream up the story, that it feels most pointed. It's kind of the crux of my issue writing this review: How do you review a eulogy?
Coppola's son tragically died in a speedboating accident 25 years before filming began, and by his own admission he'd been racked by nightmares since. The power of filmmaking is that it can become a conduit for catharsis, even in the case of a grief as palpable as a father losing his son. Criticising such an obvious exorcism of emotion seems in poor taste, but cinema as a medium is a graveyard, in which you can watch long-dead actors put on their makeup and be puppeteered around for your enjoyment. Moving pictures make marionettes. Digital technology makes it even easier. Now, those images can’t degrade; they’re not going anywhere— a snapshot of you is forever imprinted in a story, even after your own has ended.
Twixt itself hangs in a limbo of unreality. A town of people who want to be left alone is put on display. These are the backwaters of corporate America, a burial ground where zombified pulp paperback writers (and those who made The Godfather 40 years ago) come to die. Time disagrees with itself—seven clock faces argue with one another, emanating a putrid energy around the town, as residents become trapped in a purgatory from which they can’t, and don’t want to, escape. Edgar Allan Poe rustles through the cracks, stalks the forest with his lamp, and explains the metatextual ideas of storytelling itself to the audience. This is why narratively it feels top-heavy: lots of exposition leading into a 50-minute sleepwalk through some of the most gorgeous frames ever conceived.
Stylistically, this is Coppola going full Wachowski—his digital aesthetics make Baltimore seem like a sticker stuck on top of every frame, something that doesn’t belong but forces itself to. In search of a new story to distract from his own—an ending to something he hasn’t even begun to resolve yet—he seeks a necessary physical revolution of form itself, hoping to find a way through his grief. There is no difference between V (Elle Fanning) in the dream world and him in the real one. It makes all too much sense coming from a director who knows the world now sees him as a "bargain-basement Stephen King"—at once the crazed lunatic responsible for Apocalypse Now, and the trite director of Tetro. Coppola embodies both personas: the mythos of one of the greatest filmmakers and the dismissal of a man making personal, stylized movies about his grief. It's this separation into two distinct identities that allows Twixt to come about.
It’s one of the great cinematic therapy sessions, and one of the few genuine attempts to grasp the ephemeral—to grasp those damn tears in rain.