Grade:
C

What’s It About?
A young man living in purgatory after his suicide goes on a road trip to find the soul of his girlfriend in life.

What’s it’s Bechdel Test Score?
1/3 – F!!!

What About Minorities?
Another F! There are virtually no POC in purgatory, which I could possibly buy if there had been any hand-waving about the world: ie, perhaps most of the suicides were white and atheist, or POC were less likely to commit suicide because of culture or religion or something? I don’t know. I imagine that they were geographically linked – this particular part of purgatory was the United States of purgatory, but I just think it was a little dishonest that all of the suicides in the United States were white. There was a little joke about an Arab taxi driver, and one of the characters mentioning that he hadn’t met any Arabs since coming to Purgatory, so the taxi driver must’ve been a suicide bomber.

And then I was pretty insulted by the character Nanuk. More under the cut.

I actually saw most of this movie back when I was still at university, when it was doing the festivals and I was working at a festival cinema in Edinburgh. I must have been a different person then, because I loved what I saw. I was probably (actually, I was definitely) some pretentious emo kid who was super in love with her own unhappiness. That’s why I liked this movie so much.

Watching it again a few years later, after doing some serious growing up? This movie was so disappointing.

But first, let’s discuss what’s right with the film. The basic premise, a road trip in Purgatory, is great. The world they build in Purgatory is fantastic. The filmmakers made a conscious choice to saturate or desaturate colours whether or not the scene takes place in Purgatory or the living world. Everything in Purgatory is just like it was in real life, just a little bit worse, and here one is surrounded by people just as miserable as they are, with no way to escape. You can see why this appealed to super-emo three-years-younger me.

Based upon an Israeli short story, the basic plot is definitely appealing. A young man commits suicide for whatever reason, thinking the entire time about how much his girlfriend will pay lip service to missing him, and then probably move on pretty quickly. He ends up in Puragtory, working at a shitty pizzeria and living with an asshole, hanging out with a “gypsy punk” (based upon the lead singer of Gogol Bordello), and generally being in the same situation he was before. He figures out somehow that his girlfriend in life committed suicide and sets out on a road trip to find her. (The geography of Purgatory seems to be somewhat congruent to the geography of Earth, with those who died in particular cities living in the not-as-great version of the same city).

It’s a fairly predictable script, with the two buddies heading out on the road and meeting a girl hitchhiker along the way – and of course the young man falls for the new girl, and learns that what he needs is what is right in front of him, not this thing he was searching for that was never really there for him in life anyway.

The problem is, this new girl is completely unbearable. Patrick Fugit does a good job, but Shannyn Sossaman is really not that great an actress. The character was totally one of those girls who has manipulated men her whole life and gotten everything she wants just because she’s pretty, and I kind of get the feeling Sossaman is the same way. Totally unlikeable, obnoxious, and definitely not worth Fugit’s character’s time. They have no chemistry. She is completely selfish and claims she is there by a mistake – she died of a drug overdose, not an actual suicide, which just makes me think she’s stupid. I know too many pretty, selfish party girls who expect everybody else to pick up after them to give a shit about Sossaman’s character. If she had at least committed suicide I’d have felt bad for her.

So this girl totally sucks and is not right for Fugit’s (admitted pretty shallow himself) character. They don’t really seem to fit together, I never felt a genuine attraction between them. And yet… he falls for her. Because she’s pretty? If that’s the case then Fugit’s character is an idiot and I don’t care about any of these people.

The Gogol Bordello man was a pretty compelling sidekick – his arc was also pretty predictable, (starts out as a womanizing dick, is really just lonely, finally meets the right person and settles down) but he was at least somewhat likeable and entertaining.

The best part of the movie took place in act 2.2, (the second half of act two, when things generally start to go to shit for all the characters), when they were at the Happy Camp. Tom Waits plays a sort of magic man who runs a camp for people out in the woods, and everybody there is capable of performing small miracles – the kind that happen when you aren’t thinking of them, that happen on their own. The Happy Camp and its followers are sort of at war with this King Messiah who lives in the woods (played by Will Arnett in a regrettably brief role). There is an allusion to a rivalry between the two camps, and this is where I really fell in love with the world that was created in this film.

If this part of the movie was a TV show, I would certainly watch it every week. Fucked up young people living in Purgatory, a place where there is an ocean hidden in the forest, where suicide cults and hippies face off and try to save souls? It would be friggin’ fantastic. The love story – the main part of this story – was the least compelling part.

The stuff I loved about Wristcutters – Tom Waits, the Happy Camp, the King Messiah, the endless potential in this muted, frowny world – I loved a LOT. The stuff I hated outweighed the stuff I loved though, especially since the hitchhiker girl/love interest was SO unlike-able. I actually actively hated her, and I rarely actively hate “good” characters.

And then! There’s Nanuk! Argh!

Nanuk lives in the Happy Camp, and is a mute throat-singer, that is, she is supposed to be Inuit. But she is white. (I believe the actress, who is also one of the producers, is Jewish, but either way she’s definitely not Inuit.) Nanuk wears a furry hat and furry boots and hangs out by a mini igloo, and died in a snow flurry. At first glance I thought Nanuk was a little girl, and I would’ve forgiven that if she was a quirky little kid who was obsessed with Inuit stuff or something, but she was a grown woman. And they’re always making references to how Nanuk comes “from so far away” like “the North Pole or wherever.” So… why is she not actually Inuit?

She also throat-sings, and the throat-singing sounded, I don’t know, decent I guess, but it obviously wasn’t her doing it. Besides the throat-singing, she is mute. She doesn’t say anything! She has no agency! Her whole plot is to do with the sidekick’s B-story and everybody else cracks jokes about how she only likes him because she can’t understand what he’s saying. Because Inuits apparently don’t speak English? In the 21st Century?

Now, I don’t really expect this smallish American film to find a pretty Inuit throat-singer to put in their movie, but I can, for the record, think of one off the top of my head – Tanya Tagaq-Gillis. So, okay. They didn’t know there were actual throat singers they could’ve gotten, or they couldn’t search for one, or whatever. The thing is, what is the point of Nanuk if she doesn’t even talk and it requires someone to totally fake being an oppressed minority? She didn’t really serve much of a purpose – the whole point of her was to get the sidekick to settle down, and seeing as Nanuk doesn’t even talk, he could’ve done that with anybody. There was no reason for someone to go out of their way to pretend to be Inuit when the character doesn’t even have a personality, any lines, or any discernible arc, except for a cheap laugh. It made me really angry.

So anyway. It should’ve just been Wristcutters, and not Wristcutters, a Love Story. The love story part of it was stupid and boring, the portrayal of Nanuk was shockingly offensive, but the other stuff was rad. Unfortunately, this is billed as a comedy, and it was not really that funny.

The music was good I guess.