Goats Blu-ray Review
Maturity Interruptus
Reviewed by Michael Reuben, September 9, 2012
Goats presents the odd experience of a coming-of-age tale in which the youthful protagonist
doesn't grow up. He has new experiences, makes new acquaintances and reevaluates some old
ones, but he doesn't acquire new insight into life. At the end of the film, he doesn't seem any
different than at the beginning. It's as if Holden Caufield had concluded his famous tale by
pronouncing that the figure of the "catcher in the rye" he'd envisioned as his ideal was, like so
many others in his life, a phony.
Goats is the second film scripted by Mark Poirier, whose first work,
Smart People (2008), was
written directly for the screen. Here Poirier adapted his own novel, and both he and director
Christopher Neil may have been aiming for something like the whimsically detached tone of
which Wes Anderson is the undisputed king. But Poirier is a satirist by nature (as demonstrated
by
Smart People), and few directors have Anderson's gift for treating outlandish characters
humorously but with generosity and affection.
First-time director Neil is a member of the extended Coppola clan. He has worked as an acting
and dialogue coach and rehearsal advisor on numerous films for Francis Ford (including
The
Rainmaker), Roman (
CQ) and Sofia Coppla (most recently,
Somewhere) as well as for Sofia's
ex-husband, Spike Jonze (
Adaptation) and, on Francis Coppola's recommendation, George
Lucas (
Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith). His connections and experience attracted a stellar cast
and elicited fine performances, but Neil never seems to find a point of view for the movie. In the
absence of anything else, the young protagonist's disillusionment with everyone and everything
he encounters fills the vacuum, and that's all Neil and Poirier have to offer in
Goats.
Goats is the story of fifteen-year-old Ellis (Graham Phillips,
The Good Wife), a child of divorce,
who lives outside of Tucson, Arizona, with his mother, Wendy (Vera Farmiga), an emotional
cripple whose self-absorption is matched only by her hatred for Ellis' father, Frank (Ty Burrell of
Modern Family). Frank left when Ellis was a baby, and ever since he has always been known in
Wendy's household by the official name of "Fucking Frank". Ellis handles all of Wendy's
finances and other practical matters, as she moves from one New Age pursuit to another and one
boyfriend to another, of which the current representative is a slimeball named Bennet (Justin
Kirk).
Ellis' surrogate father is the stoner he calls Goat Man (David Duchovny), although he's
sometimes known as "Javier", which isn't his real name either. Goat Man lives in Wendy's pool
house, keeps goats, grows first-rate weed and takes Ellis on long treks without a fixed destination
through the picturesque desert. Goat Man's "wisdom" alternates between fortune cookie
platitudes and strategic silences, and his full beard and unkempt locks give him the look of a
homeless man, but he seems to care genuinely for Ellis, which is more than can be said of
Wendy, who uses the kid as an emotional prop.
At the moment, the household is unsettled, because Ellis has decided to go east to attend Gates,
the traditional prep school from which his father graduated. Wendy is appalled, but it's clear that
Ellis has been making his own decisions for years. Goat Man promises to send Ellis weed, but is
dissuaded from doing so by Jonathan the Mailman (Geoff Ellsworth), who says it isn't worth the
risk.
Despite the dramatic change in environment, Ellis settles easily into Gates, probably because,
unlike most new arrivals, he's used to fending for himself. Also, unlike most students, including
his roommate, Barney (Nicholas Lobue), Ellis doesn't feel the weight of parental pressure to
succeed, so that he's free to apply his natural aptitudes where his interests take him. He excels in
school work, but has no desire to participate in sports—that is, until the school's aggressive track
coach (Anthony Anderson) catches him smoking a joint in the neighboring woods and blackmails
him into joining the team. (He ends up excelling there too.) If Ellis needs help, as he does at one
point, there's always his father's former roommate, Dr. Eldridge (Alan Ruck), who's now a
teacher at Gates.
The real revelations for Ellis come when his father sends him a ticket to visit Frank in
Washington, D.C. for Thanksgiving. Having made a fortune in retail, Frank is now remarried to
Judy (Keri Russell), who is pregnant with Ellis' half-brother. Frank wants to reestablish a
relationship, and Ellis is suspicious, but he's also curious. The trip is rocky but promising, and
when Frank later turns up at Gates, Ellis seems receptive. By the time Ellis returns to Tucson for
a visit, he is already seeing Wendy, Goat Man and even the neighbor girl, Aubrey (Adelaide
Kane), on whom he had a crush, in a new and harsher light.
But seeing the flaws in his Tucson crowd doesn't give Ellis wisdom; it just makes him more
judgmental. The most promising relationship in
Goats is between Ellis and Minnie (Dakota
Johnson), a "townie" girl who does menial work at Gates but slips into the library to read when
no one is looking. She and Ellis connect over great books, when she recommends
The Great
Gatsby and
To Kill a Mockingbird, and Minnie helps him when he's injured in an incident in
town. And yet Ellis rejects her without hesitation when Minnie indicates that she's interested in
something more. Why? To start with, she's female, and everything Ellis has seen of women,
starting with Wendy, makes him mistrust them. More significantly, Minnie is rumored to provide
sexual favors to upperclassmen for money. It's probably a false rumor engendered by the
hormonal hothouse of an all-boys' prep school, but it's enough to push Ellis away. Such is the
"growth" that
Goats portrays.
The best thing the film has going for it is the gorgeous scenery against which these characters
play out their eccentricities. Arizona and New Mexico provided the western locations, and the
Sonoran desert and rock-strewn mountains convey the full magnitude of what drew Wendy and
Goat Man to the locale. The eastern settings used for the Gates Academy and its environs could
serve as a solicitation for high-end donors and as a reassurance for parents that they're sending
their sons to paradise. The beauty of the settings only serves to highlight the pettiness of the
behavior that goes on there.
Goats Blu-ray, Video Quality
Goats was shot with the Alexa digital camera, a competitor to the Red One developed by Arri.
The cinematographer was Wyatt Troll, who has shot music videos and shorts for Spike Jonze and
others. Whatever reservations I have about the film's content, there are none about the video
quality of Image Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray. The resolution, clarity and detail
of the imagery is simply stunning. Combined with the wonderful locations, the colorful, noise-free picture gives you something interesting to look at during
moments when the film's dramatic
pace slackens. The Alexa is especially noted for the subtlety of its color delineation, and in
Goats
(no doubt with some assistance from the digital intermediate colorist), it does a fine job of
differentiating the warm southwestern colors from the overall cooler tonality of the eastern
environment, with its blue blazers and white dorm walls. Blacks are true, fleshtones are natural,
and since the entire path from capture to Blu-ray is digital, of course there are no analog issues of
filtering or sharpening to be reckoned with. Even with extras, the total amount of material on the
disc doesn't exceed two hours, and a BD-25 accommodates everything without compression
issues.
