Dark Horse Blu-ray Review
Losing Proposition
Reviewed by Michael Reuben, November 15, 2012
A memorable exchange in Todd Solondz's 1998 tour de force,
Happiness, occurs between Helen,
an icy, self-absorbed beauty and her mousy, emotionally needy sister with the ironic name of Joy.
"I'm not laughing
at you", says Helen, "I'm laughing
with you." To which Joy faintly protests:
"But I'm not laughing!" The narrow space where the sisters don't connect is where Solondz
always seems to be aiming: a point where it's possible to laugh, but you're not sure it's the right
thing to do. The danger of such a pursuit, especially for a filmmaker of Solondz's icy precision,
is that it doesn't allow an audience the relief that uninhibited laughter provides. Snorts of
derision aren't a lot of fun, and pinning up self-deluded, hopeless lives to be studied like
butterflies in a collection isn't most viewers' idea of entertainment, which is why Solondz
remains confined to the arthouse. Even
Happiness, which got laughs with shock effects,
grotesquerie and violence (mostly imaginary), failed to attract a wider audience.
Dark Horse is a more modestly scaled effort, and it doesn't have much of a plot. But it's a
fascinating film, because it's the first time that Solondz has applied his considerable talent for
depicting broken lives without a hint of mockery. The protagonist of
Dark Horse, Abe
Westheimer, is pitiful, self-destructive, self-deluding and childish in the extreme. He's also a
deeply melancholy man who has seen life pass him by and knows in his bones that he will never
catch up. Branded a "dark horse" from an early age, he keeps trying to compete, even as he feels
that the race is already over. Jordan Gelber, until now a supporting player in movies and TV,
gives an award-worthy performance by making this unappealing character a fully rounded human
being—and how often does one reach for that phrase in describing someone in a film by Todd
Solondz?
Dark Horse opens at a lively wedding, at which two people are sitting apart: Abe (Gelber) and
Miranda (Selma Blair). At first glance, the scene appears obvious and familiar. A pushy,
overweight jerk is trying to pick up an attractive woman, and she's sitting there uncomfortably
calculating how best to slip away. While that description is accurate, the rest of
Dark Horse
demonstrates how much more is happening beneath and behind the scene. (The end credits list
Blair's character as "Miranda (formerly 'Vi')", which suggests that she's an older version of the
character that Blair played in 2001's
Storytelling.)
Abe does ultimately succeed in getting Miranda's number, and they do end up on a date of sorts.
Behind the perpetually stricken look on Miranda's face lies an array of issues that, in a hallmark
of Solondz's world, are specific and bizarre. The marketing hook for
Dark Horse suggests that
"love" develops between Miranda and Abe, but while something does develop, it's far too
strange and distinctive to be called love. It's
something, though, which is more than Abe appears
to have managed previously with anyone outside his family.
Abe is hardly ready for anything as demanding as love. While we get only glimpses into
Miranda's life,
Dark Horse provides an extensive overview of Abe's, and it's a tour of dead
ends. Abe works for his father, Jackie (Christopher Walken, pent-up and subdued), in property
management, where he does as little as possible, despite constant protests that he's working hard.
Instead of preparing the spreadsheets for which his father keeps asking, Abe trolls eBay for
collectibles, of which his room at his parents' home is a veritable museum. (He's also a regular at
Toys 'R' Us, although the logo has been digitally obscured, presumably to save licensing fees.)
When Abe enters the house, he slinks past Jackie and his mom, Phyllis (Mia Farrow), barely
acknowledging her greeting, so that he can hide in his room and imagine an alternate life with
someone like Miranda. Put him with strangers, and Abe does a paper-thin imitation of a
successful businessman. No one is fooled.
In a kind of sad comment on their family life, Abe's parents are always watching a TV show that
sounds something like
Seinfeld, because it features the voices of George Costanza and his
parents. The production company couldn't afford to license
Seinfeld, but it was able to hire Jason
Alexander, Estelle Harris and Jerry Stiller to do voiceovers for
Seinfeld-like dialogue. If only the
Westheimers were even remotely like the Costanzas!
A constant reminder of Abe's failure in life is his brother, Richard (Justin Bartha), a doctor in
California. As mothers tend to do, Phyllis keeps trying to get them back in touch, but Abe will
have none of it. As the film progresses, Richard begins to intrude into the dreams and waking
fantasies that gradually overwhelm Abe's thoughts. At first, they are dominated by Marie (a sly
Donna Murphy), who, in Abe's mind, morphs from being a frazzled co-worker offering him
assistance in his father's office to a sloe-eyed cougar with a fast car and even faster hands.
Eventually, though, Abe's fantasies spin as wildly out of control as his real life, especially after
Miranda introduces him to her ex-boyfriend, a frothy extrovert named Mahmoud (Aasif Mandvi,
fitting right into the Solondz universe).
When Abe shows Miranda his parents' home, he points to the door frame where his father
marked off his and his brother's heights as they grew. The markings have now been covered with
wallpaper. The image recurs toward the end of the film and marks a final turn leading to the
story's conclusion, which my colleague Brian Orndorf found to be a "
switcheroo" when
Dark
Horse was in theaters. It's certainly a provocative ending, following upon developments that
would be shocking in almost anything except a Todd Solondz film, but I'm not sure the final
sequence should be taken too seriously. Like the sled in
Citizen Kane, it's a piece of the puzzle,
but not the whole picture.
More central to Abe's story is a speech he delivers—nominally to his mother, who happens to be
in the room, but really to the universe in general—about all the opportunities that have passed
him by. In an earlier Todd Solondz film, this would have been a cringe-inducing display of
narcissism by a lazy jackass, worthy only of ridicule. But in this one, and in the hands of Jordan
Gelber, it becomes a tragic lament by someone who knows he's blown it, can't figure out why
and, under all that bluster, hates himself for not trying harder. People like that exist, more than
we care to think about, and Solondz understands their pain. This is one of their stories, and the
film's ending is meant as a reminder that it's not a rarity.
Dark Horse Blu-ray, Video Quality
Dark Horse bears all the marks of digital
photography, and after this review was posted, I was contacted by someone who worked on the film, who confirmed that the film was shot with the Red
system. The cinematographer was the talented Andrij Parekh, whose effective
intermingling of film and digital was essential to the aesthetic of the haunting
Blue Valentine. As
he so often does, Solondz has situated his dark tale in a superficially cheerful suburban world,
and the image on Virgil Films's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray aptly conveys the brightly lit
surroundings that merely serve to emphasize the black hole of Abe's life. Noise is wholly absent,
blacks are deep and solid, and detail is so good that toy and memorabilia enthusiasts may want to
pause the disc during scenes in Abe's bedroom to admire his collections. (The life-size
gremlin in his office is also impressive.) Bright primary colors dominate Abe's favorite places,
including
Toys "R" Us, er, the toy store, but even his father's office looks brighter and more
inviting than your typical dingy bean counter's affair. Abe drives a bright yellow Hummer,
because, apparently, that's just one of the many toys that sustains his interest in clinging to the
edge of the abyss.
A BD-25 is more than sufficient to accommodate this 86-minute film with no extras.
