THE RAMBLER (2013)

Studio:       Anchor Bay
Director:    Calvin Lee Reeder
Writer:       Calvin Lee Reeder
Producer:  Nate Bolotin, Roger M. Mayer, Christo Dimassis, James Lejsek, Clayton Young
Stars:     Dermot Mulroney, Lindsay Pulsipher, James Cady, Scott Sharot, Paul Blott, Natasha Lyonne

Review Score:

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Summary:

A convict released from prison starts a new life on the road by drifting from one strange place to the next.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Cheryl picks up her unnamed boyfriend, The Rambler, when he is released from prison after serving four years. He comes home to a welcoming party of strange friends and resumes his old job at a pawnshop where he is verbally abused by his boss Roberta.

Frustrated that he will not have sex with her, Cheryl tells the Rambler that she is pregnant with ventriloquist Daryl’s child and she kicks the Rambler out of her house. After receiving a letter from his brother in Oregon that his family needs help on their farm, the Rambler steals the money from the pawnshop cash register and sets out on the road.

The Rambler meets The Girl as he makes his way northwest. While hitchhiking, the Rambler accepts a ride from The Scientist. The Scientist transports a carload of mummies and a machine he claims can record a person’s dreams to VHS. Stopping at a car wash to showcase his invention, a drunken man volunteers to test the Scientist’s apparatus and the man’s head explodes.

The Rambler and the Scientist stop for a drink. The Scientist falls for a girl sitting at the bar while the Rambler plays poker at a table. A fight breaks out and the Rambler beats a fat man that cut his hand. Inspired by the outburst, a man named Dale offers to set the Rambler up in another town with an underground fight ring. Dale hits the Rambler over his head with a piece of lumber to get him out of a match with a hook-handed fat man. Later, the Rambler is beaten badly in his second bout and Dale admits that he bet on the Rambler to lose.

The Rambler parts ways with the Scientist after discovering that he exploded the head of the girl from the bar. The Rambler meets the Girl again when he finds her working as a waitress at a diner. She and the Rambler begin a romance. He dreams that he finds a playing card in her neck after she is mauled by a pit bull. Their relationship deepens until he sees her killed by a falling stage light while she performs at a local bar.

The Rambler has a dreamlike experience in a strange house. The Scientist picks him up again when he finds the Rambler lying in the middle of a dirt road. The Scientist takes the Rambler to his house and introduces the drifter to his deformed daughter. The Rambler eventually finds the Scientist’s head nearly exploded from using his own device. The Rambler takes the Scientist’s tape from the VCR and goes back on the road.

A Driver obsessed with the movie “Frankenstein” gives the Rambler a lift. The Rambler makes it to his brother’s ranch, but he leaves after realizing that the family life is not for him. The Driver picks up the Rambler again and tells him that he was fired from his job as a paramedic because he has an obsession for mutilated women.

The two men find the Girl wandering in a bloody daze in the middle of the road with her left arm dangling off. Convinced that he can save her, the Driver puts her in his taxi and brings her and the Rambler back to his house. The Girl ends up dying, but she turns into a creature and the house is set on fire. The Rambler watches the house burn from outside.

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Review:

“Lynchian” is a made up word that critics fall back on when the need arises to sum up a cinematic oddity succinctly.  Anyone familiar with filmmaker David Lynch’s body of work has an instant touchstone in mind when his name comes up in reference to another movie’s style or atmosphere.  “Lynchian” basically means “weird, but with an artistic purpose.”  A film that can be described with that phrase should also come with an expectation of nonlinear narrative, and “The Rambler” qualifies for all of the above.

Any plot summary offered by someone other than writer/director Calvin Lee Reeder is pointless, since he is possibly the only person who can claim a full understanding of everything taking place in his film.  The gist of it is that Dermot Mulroney is the contemporary drifter version of Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name, albeit with a much less irritated demeanor.  After serving four years in prison, The Rambler hits the open road, hitchhiking his way through a swath of the United States that exists somewhere between Twin Peaks and wherever the traveling sideshow from HBO’s “Carnivàle” ended up.

The Rambler himself is at once fearless, yet mortal.  His general nonchalance could be mistaken for a devil may care attitude, though it is more that he is simply willing to accept anything and anyone at face value.  He has the type of “so be it” philosophy that keeps him visibly unfazed by exploding heads and other manners of sudden death, as well as the occasional fist or bullet aimed in his direction.

Even when pulling a bloody playing card out of a dog-mauled woman’s exposed neck sinew, The Rambler is constantly expressing the words “no big deal” without even having to shrug his shoulders.  For a man of few words whose eyes are nearly always hidden behind mirrored-lens sunglasses, Mulroney packs a striking amount of character into the drifter’s cooled persona.

The Rambler rarely initiates a conversation, nor does he have to.  One of the oddities about the world of “The Rambler” is that its inhabitants universally speak openly and behave in a bluntly frank manner.  Not to the point where they feel free reign to behave badly, but rather to go about their varied business while absent of a filter concerned with societal perceptions.  This is a bizarre corner of the universe populated by bow-tied ventriloquists, hook-handed boxers, and little people in orange prison jumpsuits, and none of them feel the need to hide anything from anyone.

Ironically, the closer the movie goes towards traditional storytelling, the less interesting it becomes as a film.  There is a midpoint where the Rambler carries on a romance and his daily life can be considered normal for a change.  Watching him frolic by the seaside or take in the family man lifestyle of his ordinary brother comes with a longing for “The Rambler” to return to its quirky characters and nonsensical charm.

“The Rambler” is at its most engaging while working as a rambling series of disjointed vignettes.  It stops mattering if the film is going to add up to anything completely cohesive or coherent and it becomes fascinating as a uniquely original experience flavored with comedy, horror, and drama.

Something true about the films of David Lynch is that even when intentions fly over the viewer’s head, there is still a sense that at least the director knows what is going on.  The same is true of Calvin Reeder.  With so many diverse weirdos and multi-faceted curiosities bounding around each corner, Reeder ropes it all together with remarkably unified clarity.

Lesser filmmakers indulge in showy excess for vanity’s sake.  Here, Reeder achieves that true Lynchian effect of being immersed in a vision carefully constructed by capable hands.  Nothing is empty symbolism tossed in on a careless whim or to intentionally confuse, even when it unintentionally does.  It comes to a point where the lush visuals, spontaneous chortles, and offbeat sensibilities completely rob things like plot and structure of their importance.

Put a bouncing ball at the bottom of the screen, and it would still be impossible to follow along from beginning to end.  The best advice is to pocket conventional expectations and take the film with the same “let’s just see what happens” approach that the Rambler has.  “The Rambler” would not be the strangely appealing movie it is if it were presented as any less off the wall.

Review Score:  70

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