Kalifornia [1993] Brad Pitt

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Kalifornia (1993)


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107302/

Kalifornia (1993) is an American thriller/road film, directed by Dominic Sena and starring Brad Pitt, Juliette Lewis, David Duchovny, and Michelle Forbes. The film focuses on an aspiring writer (Duchovny) and his photographer girlfriend (Forbes) who are traveling cross-country to research serial killers. To help pay for gas, they take along a man (Pitt) and his childlike girlfriend (Lewis), unaware that the man is a killer himself.

Brad Pitt ... Early Grayce
Kathy Larson ... Teenage Girl (as Catherine Larson)
David Milford ... Driver
David Duchovny ... Brian Kessler
John Zarchen ... Peter
David Rose ... Eric
Michelle Forbes ... Carrie Laughlin
Tommy Chappelle ... Old Man
Juliette Lewis ... Adele Corners

What happened to Dominic Sena? His directorial debut Kalifornia may fall short of being a masterpiece, but it's a tremendously involving film that demonstrates some very good directorial instincts. It's a complex, frightening little thriller with a thoughtful core. So why is it that Sena has only managed to produce rubbish like Gone in Sixty Seconds, Swordfish, and Whiteout in the years since? One of those strange cinematic oddities, I suppose. Even so, at least Sena will also have one film on his resume he can be proud of.

Kalifornia is one of a handful of films released in the early-to-mid-'90s that caused certain individuals to start throwing up their hands and decrying the senseless violence of Hollywood (films like True Romance, Natural Born Killers, and Pulp Fiction fell into this category). To be sure, the film is violent (nearly two decades later, it still hasn't lost much of its shock value), but the violence is neither glamorized nor sensationalistic. Like Michael Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me, Kalifornia takes violent behavior to an extreme in order to accentuate its horrifying nature. It's doubtful that any of the moments of bloodletting are likely to inspire cheers or grins (though you never know; someone like Early may be watching).

The film is rooted in the idea that some people kill because they like killing and because they're evil. Forget all the psychological explanations, forget the traumatized childhoods, forget the bad social environments, forget the influence of televisionΓΓ鼪Kalifornia says that sometimes it's just because certain people are bad to the core. The characters played by Duchovny and Forbes are into "dark, gritty" stuff (he has an obsession with grisly murders; she creates rather brutal photography "unsuitable for mass appeal"), but their interest come from a detached, intellectual place. Forced to confront the reality of these obsessions, they begin to understand the true terror of a serial killer's mind. I may be making the film sound a bit smug, but in reality it's a truthful and even compassionate portrait of these characters. They may be misguided; but the movie doesn't hate them for it.

The four principle actors are well-cast and play their roles effectively. Duchovny and Forbes both project intelligence in different ways, and Duchovny's earnest curiosity plays nicely against Forbes' cool cynicism. Forbes is particularly effective as the film progresses; she sees the B.S. for what it is well before things get nasty for all parties involved. However, the showier roles belong to Pitt and Lewis. Pitt's performance ranks as one of his strongest roles of the '90s; a cheerfully horrific turn rooted in sadistic violence. Pitt and Lewis both adopt voices that initially make them seem like redneck cartoons, but they so fully embody the characters that they feel convincing. Lewis' behavior makes more sense as the film proceeds, as we start to understand that her chipper persona is basically a mask for the deep-rooted hurt lying underneath.

Kalifornia's impact on the viewer is strong. Grayce is likeable, sympathy-evoking, shocking, repulsive and frightening at various times and often at the same time. Much of this is attributable to Pitt, but the rest of the ensemble create these properties in Grayce as much as Pitt does. It is rare to come across a film where the cast is not only so strong, but works together with a chemistry like a great rock and roll band. Kalifornia is such a film. And usually, those films are straight-ahead dramas. Kalifornia does it in wonderfully bleak serial killer film.

The beginning has shades of a dark, Blade Runner-like atmosphere. As Kalifornia progresses, the look of the film evolves into bright, colorful scenes, but that progression is in reverse to the emotional developments and crises of the film, which begin innocently and end in a quagmire of moral dilemmas and intense tragedy. We can speculate on Sena's motivation for this. I have a number of guesses, all of which may be true or not -- it shows (a) that things are not always as they seem, (b) foreshadowing of the events to come, (c) a profound existential awakening that Kessler experiences as the events unfold, and (d) a gradual explosion of the madness that lies inside Grayce.

Kalifornia never received the attention it deserved, which is especially surprising in view of the cast. It's entertaining, deep, artistic, and no less of a critique of society than any of Stone's work. Although the violence might put some film fans off, it is less intense than the explosion of carnage in Natural Born Killers. For me, each viewing of this film brings out aspects I hadn't noticed before, but everyone should check out this film at least once.