CS Weekly Archive > Weekend Read > 9/23/05

Footloose -- With Guns!

By jeff goldsmith

Dogme95 colleagues Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg team up for an English-language film that obsessively pokes fun at America's fascination with guns. The result is a quirky, comedic, and oddly entertaining film. The strength of Von Trier's writing here is that it's so intriguingly absurdist that it keeps you transfixed, waiting to see what these quirky characters will do next.

Dear Wendy

Lars Von Trier

In an all-American town, set in a timeless early 20th-century period, a down-on-his-luck teen named Dick (Jamie Bell) falls in love with a handgun. This antique but functional weapon beckons Dick and seems like just the item to brighten his future. In fact, once Dick "makes himself a man" by carrying around the gun, it seems as if his life has changed for the better, as he's joined by a few other misfits (Michael Angarano, Danso Gordon, Chris Owen, Alison Pill and Mark Webber) who form an antique gun-lovers club called "The Dandies." They meet in an abandoned mine shaft and shoot their pistols to their hearts' content, even as their self-confidence and social skills blossom. Each of The Dandies names their gun, Dick choosing "Wendy" for his firearm; thus the film's title, a reference to the love letter Dick is writing to his gun (and the storytelling device that bookends the film). When the town's adults, many gun-toters themselves, ask the pacifistic Dandies to lay down their arms, the kids must chose whether to break their vow never to draw their weapons against people.

The Danish film collective Dogme95, of which both writer Lars Von Trier (Breaking The Waves) and director Thomas Vinterberg (The Celebration) are founding members, began with a stern set of rules as to how their films should be made. The use of music, sound effects, or lighting that wasn't naturally part of the setting was forbidden in Dogme films, which were also mandated to be shot on video. No special effects were permitted, nor were optical title cards. This experiment altered the way many people look at film, as the Dogme95 films brought narrative fiction to the screen in a cinéma vérité style that seemed like a docudrama. Now, as the collective reaches its 10-year anniversary, all the rules have been purged as director Vinterberg breathes life into Von Triers' screenplay by shooting it on 35mm film with studio lighting, a cool soundtrack, and a smattering of gunpowdery special effects. This new chapter for these collaborators at times feels like a comedic David Lynch film in that there's no self awareness to these teens' outrageous behavior, which within their own group is passed off as completely normal. Think Footloose with guns and a with a bit of Taps sprinkled over it.

Dear Wendy would have remained a one-gimmick joke if the infectious love for guns concerned only these teens. But the script's scope expands, and we see authoritative gun-toting adults demand the teens lay down their weapons. The hypocrisy of the situation is underplayed, and that's why the political implications of it work so well, because it's never heavy handed.

Beyond this thematic jab at not "practicing what they're preaching" is Von Trier's brilliant choice to set the script in the low-budget setting of a town square that seems to exist somewhere between the 1920s and the 1940s, but which is subtly, anachronistically infused with the occasional bit of contemporary technology. Also well conceived is the abandoned mine shaft, a perfect retreat for this group of alienated teens who themselves feel abandoned by their parents. Tonally, Von Trier succeeds because he never calls for his character's personalities to be completely over the top, even though their actions are throughout. This roots them into a clearly absurdist reality, and because they take their world seriously, so do we. Because there is no winking at the audience here, The Dandies' fetishistic love of weapons becomes infectious, regardless of where you stand on gun-related issues, and is then blown out of the water by the film's concluding ballet of bullets.

Dear Wendy is one of those rare experimental screenplays that succeeds in transporting you to an absurd and funny world in an entertaining and accessible fashion. Both the characters and the story they tell are so creatively loopy but loveable that it's worth a watch for any screenwriters looking for non-traditional narrative styles through which to express themselves.

Dear Wendy
Wellspring Media
Not rated; 104 min.

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Jeff Goldsmith is senior editor for Creative Screenwriting magazine and serves as the Los Angeles Events Coordinator in charge of the Creative Screenwriting screening series.

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