kiss, miss, bang, bang
Don’t Come Knocking
dir. Wim Wenders; starring Sam Shepard, Jessica Lange, Tim Roth
A lonesome cowboy is what Howard (Sam Shepard) appears to be amid the breathtaking desert landscapes at the beginning of Don’t Come Knocking. And that is the fi rst of a series of subtle ironies, stunning visuals and an eerie but electrifying score by T-Bone Burnett that punctuate the fi lm.
Ironic, because Howard has just left his cocaine speckled trailer on the fi lm set of a cowboy movie (they still make them?), along with a sign inside saying “DON’T COME KNOCKING IF THE TRAILER’S ROCKING”. The horse he is riding is soon traded for some different clothes, and then he rents a car to drive to his mother’s house. She (Eva Marie Saint) makes him cookies, hints at his wasteful lifestyle and tells him he’s got a kid.
He sets off in search of it (yes, a little like in Broken Flowers) and heads for a small town in Montana. In the mean time, an excellent Tim Roth, playing a comical insurance company detective, sets out to fi nd Howard in order to get the actor back on the set.
The movie then settles in the small Montana town where Howard shot his fi rst movie, and he realises the life he forgot about : Doreen (Jessica Lange), is still a waitress and also is the mother of his 27 year old son, the song-writing and rebellious Earl who doesn’t want much to do with his newly acquired father. A mysterious girl (Sky played by Sarah Polley) always carrying an urn full of her dead mother’s ashes gives the movie a magical, surreal edge.
A couple of criticisms do seem necessary, however. One is Shepard and Lange’s botox laden age that is unfl atteringly showed up by Wenders’ camera. Another is the pace that occasionally slows to almost a halt but these slow moments are nearly always founded and allow the viewers time to think or indulge in the music and the images, and for this reason, a Phoenix-sized screen does not suffi ce.
The themes of identity and family are looked into, (like in Paris, Texas twenty two years ago, Shepard wrote both fi lms), making the fi lm emotional but without being corny. Don’t Come Knocking also has the invigorating effect of making the viewer come out of the cinema feeling just like Howard, alienated but restructured, so we’ll have to believe that Wim Wenders knows his stuff.
20th Apr 2006