Red Dirt

Rating:
Summary: Life's Little Compromises
Review: "Red Dirt" is an excellent story about life - no matter how convoluted it can seem. If you go into watching this film expecting a nice, tidy love story, you'll be sorely disappointed.
"Red Dirt" revolves around Griffith, a Southern born and bred young man, raised by crazy Aunt Summer ever since being orphaned some time ago. Griffith is now taking care of his aunt and his only friend is his cousin, Emily, who is also his lover. Griffith longs for something to take him away from his backwoods existence. That something comes in the form of Lee, a care-free, free-spirited drifter.
Of course, there's the requisite bemoaning of Griffith's future, his reluctance/refusal to want to take care of his aunt, the breakup of cousin/lover to chase after new friend. But there is a lot more to the story than that. Now, as long as you don't go into "Red Dirt" expecting everything to turn out hunky-dory, you'll be alright.
"Red Dirt" is a story about life, and life's not always fair. (Take it from a gay man who's life has just as many twists and turns as Griffith's has.) Having realized this by movie's end, the chosen ending is quite understandable. Would any other ending have been fair to the characters involved? "Red Dirt" is quite a good story dealing with the fact that despite our most deepest wants or needs, compromises and sacrifices are the tools in the game of life. "Red Dirt" is an excellent film.

Rating:
Summary: More Real Than I Expected
Review: Many have accurately described this movie as subtle and lacking action or gay sex. This is a story, most importantly, about well-developed characters that almost anyone can relate to. I don't know if being a bit southern increased my enjoyment of the movie, but I could certainly relate to the constant struggle going on (with the lead characters) about whether the cost of change and uprooting your life (or any part of it) is worth the potential benefits of leaving everything you have, everything you know, and all the people who depend on you. I've been there.

I thought the film was done tastefully, thoughtfully, and was fair to each of the characters (not making any one the villain or the savior.) There's a little of both in everyone.

It's not a fairly-tale ending, but life is seldom "happily ever after." I thought each of the characters made progress in their search for peace, freedom, and self-acceptance.

My only real gripe is the sound track, which was nice, but overwhelming at times. I would have appreciated more sounds of characters speaking and less sounds of crickets, but that's minor.

Good film overall. Worth your time.

Rating:
Summary: Not worth the time or money
Review: Ever watch a movie and feel like you were cheated out of two hours of your life? Well that might help to describe the feeling I was left with after watching this movie. As a person who lives in the South, I've come to realize that there is nothing worse than actors who portray Southerners who can't pull off a believable southern accent. Couple this with a story line that goes no where and leaves you simply annoyed by the end of the movie and you might start to get a feel for this movie. True, some of the actors in the movie are beautiful to look at(Dan Montgomery is drop dead beautiful), but sheer beauty cannot overcome the first few spoken words out of his mouth.
This could have been a great "coming of age" movie set in the deep south, but it just doesn't succeed.

Rating:
Summary: Cheap imitation of Tennessee Williams, Southern Gothic
Review: I am puzzled that this movie has so many admirers. There are four characters, an insane old lady, her nephew who is a latent [...], her niece and a drifter who falls in love with the nephew The whole film feels like a throwback to the fifties. Most of the time we are treated to endless, dreary monologues by the crazy old woman, spiced with tearful, affected scenes between the nephew/son and the niece. The only real interest of the film is the homoerotic friendship of the nephew and the drifter, but this is treated very gingerly, and in the end the drifter is seen off, after a single kiss, and a phony Faulkner quote. This is simply not the way real people behave. Nor do two men spend time together for weeks on end without _something_ happening between them,[...]

The movie is full of lush, phony, precious pseudo-Southern Gothic moments, but desperate boredom is the predominant emotion excited in the viewer.

The actors have a very poor script to work with, but the actor who plays Lee the drifter is memorable as he struggles to confess his love for the nephew. He only gets a punch in the face for his pains.

Rating:
Summary: And Then Tennessee Williams Got Really Drunk.
Review: In all honesty, I can't begin to fathom why anyone would give this movie a good review. We begin by seeing a guy and a girl leaning against a tree. It's pretty obvious they've been intimate. The scenery is beautiful (as are the actors), and everything would be wonderful, except the people start talking. Then the movie goes straight to hell.

It's not like people shouldn't talk. But when they talk in "southern" accents drenched in drama and melancholy, when every word is carefully weighed for maximum effect, when a character actually says, "You are flesh of my flesh," and it's not meant as a punchline or a satircal comment, then Houston, we've got a major problem.

There wasn't one line of dialogue that could pass for ordinary speech. The writer evidently worshipped at the altar of Tennessee, but unlike the famously talented playwright, this particular writer has no idea what constitutes reality and what is pure soap operatic nonsense. This movie wants to be as humid and poetic as a New Orleans boat ride, but instead it ends up moist and rotting.

As for Karen Black, she never once says, "God, I want an Academy Award nomination, and I want it now!!!" But that's pretty much the subtext behind EVERY SINGLE LINE SHE HAS.

This isn't a movie about real people, or gays, or Southerners, or anyone even remotely human. This is one extremely bad writer's idea of Tennessee Williams with a hangover.

No thank you.

Rating:
Summary: Any Small Town!
Review: Being Gay myself I could relate to, "Red Dirt." This movie could be about any small town in America. The characters were real looking, not Hollywood types. The movie moved at a nice pace. This was one of the best movies to come my way in a long time. Anyone dealing with being Gay from a small town would appreciate this video. The neat thing about this one as well in the fact that Ded Dirt deals with other family issues as well. It tells one from any walk in life that things are not always as they seem. Relax, and embrace this movie, and its artful nature.

Rating:
Summary: Unexpectedly Beautiful
Review: "Red Dirt" is not quite like any film -independent or otherwise - to have come out in some time. Some critics expressed disappointment that this wasn't a great southern romance either straight or gay while others seem to have been unable to connect with the characters.

While the premise is easily recognizable and perhaps, predictable, what Purvis did was take a standard situation - and give it a spin all its own with fresh, inviting characters.

Purvis captures perfectly a small town in the deep South. With deadly silences its soundscape is hauntingly punctuated by birds, wolves, crickets, locust, and endless rain it is immediately haunting yet peaceful.

Another element of the deep south is the employment of crazy women essential to any good southern tale. All four women in this story exhibit varying signs of madness as each attempts to hold on to her deeply hidden, long held secret. Purvis's women exhibit a wondrously wide - and wild - range of emotion bouncing from minor instability, madness profound wisdom and acceptance.

One of the most touching elements of the film was the bonding connection between Emily and Aunt Summer, with Em's final "goodbye" one of those arrestingly beautiful moments so rarely truly captured on film.

The gay repression angle works perfectly here, both men quiet about it, but Dan Montgomery, Jr. as Griffith is so actually socially naïve and stunted as to believe what is going on between he and Lee (a wonderful performance by Walter Goggins) is devoid of any sexual or romantic leanings: a pure friendship. This makes his final unhinging and dangerous rage believable and ultimately moving.

Comments about Karen Black's being "all over the place" are correct, but this is not a bad thing. Her character is just that - emotionally unstable, a lifetime of guilt over her secret which is what is driving her mad. We see that pent up madness within her escaping in her dramatic loony-tune sequences and her escape into her world of music makes perfect sense.

There were complaints of the lack of romantic ending, yet I can't imagine a more classically "romantic" finale then this. Rage, revelation and confusion subside into sadness, forgiveness, self-awareness and acceptance - all as the sun streams down on a glorious southern evening.

Physically, as well, this is a stunning film, the photography breathtaking, the Purvis's use and sense of color vivid and true.

In all honesty I did not expect to enjoy Red Dirt at all and was surprised to find myself drawn to these characters and watching them in their self-imposed exiles all the while futilely trying to connect to each other. A powerful, beautiful, movie that moves at its own pace.