Bellflower - Love Lost Burns

I'm fully aware of how often I praise Bellflower, I thought I'd go ahead and write a bit about the film and what it means to me and maybe next time I'm talking about it I can just link on back to this.  The synopsis of the film really does a disservice to it's depth and the true meat of the story, but none-the-less it's what initially drew me in - two friends who are obsessed with a Mad Max like vision of the apocalypse spend their free time building a flamethrower and a muscle car so that they'll be ready for civilization to collapse, until one of them meets a girl.  Talk about underselling a film.

Be aware that from this point on I'm going to talk about the movie as if you've seen it, so I may spoil the shit out of it if you aren't careful or you'll be hopelessly confused, but I can't talk about the film without speaking on it as a whole, so that's your warning.

What struck me the most about Bellflower was how blunt and honest it was about the emotional roller coaster faced by young men dealing with new, possibly first love and the impact that the demise of that relationship has.  The way that Woodrow reacts both internally and externally to Milly's cheating is in no way mature or balanced, but as a formerly-young man I feel it was very honest.  I imagine everyone can relate to how badly you want to lash out at your own pain when you find yourself in a situation like that.  Woodrow is torn apart and is hurting in a way that people (especially young people) find difficult to endure.  As young people we have a more limited view (or maybe that was just me) that causes us to see every bump in the road as a life altering event, an insurmountable obstacle.  This can lead us to take things very hard, as well as some fairly dramatic acting out or at least ideation.   It's much harder to manage an internal pain than an external pain, something it took me years to learn myself.

Early in the film we're presented with Woodrow's immaturity through his obsession and daily pursuit of building a flamethrower to use when society collapses.  His voice and awkwardness add to this, the voice being a subtle strangeness that writer, actor, and director Evan Glodell adopted for the film.  Woodrow often sounds as if his voice is cracking, especially in the first half of the film, before his breakdown and subsequent emotional growth.  In the second half of the film, as things get darker and more serious in tone, Woodrow adapts to his new situation (albeit slowly) changing his speech slightly in a way that sounds a bit more traditionally masculine, for lack of a better phrase.

Fire plays an important, if slightly on the nose visual role in the film, flame being a metaphor for passion as well as being a menacing destructive force.  At first Woodrow's passion manifests in his desire to build a flamethrower with his friend Aiden but he neglects the project when he meets Milly, who becomes the sole focus of his passion and ultimately who suppresses it entirely.  Woodrow seems to be a man much like Tom from (500) Days of Summer who believes he'll never truly be happy until he meets "the one."  Aiden tries to keep the creative passion alive, first by finishing the flamethrower after Woodrow and Milly literally run away together and later by trying to hold their friendship together as Woodrow retreats into his increasingly mundane relationship.  After Milly cheats on him we see Woodrow revive his passion as he straps on the flamethrower and marches across town in order to burn Milly's belongings in her front yard.  As he walks down the street the flame from the gun dances around, barely contained within the machine which to me speaks to his frame of mind; he's nearly bursting at the seams with anguish and an anger he can't reconcile.  At this point his passion has become something darker.

Woodrow's post break-up passion is also manifest in his car, which Aiden buys for him after Woodrow is severely injured riding the motorcycle he bought at the behest of Milly.  The car, Medusa, is Woodrow's passion manifest.  Medusa is also a very outward expression of Aiden's love for Woodrow.  I'm not going to get involved with the "everything is gay" debate that erupts anytime two male characters are close, but it is very clear that Aiden loves Woodrow, romantically or otherwise, and works tirelessly to protect and nurture him.  More on this later, though, because right now we're talking about Medusa.  Aiden buys Woodrow a car while he's hospitalized after the accident (this opens up the films biggest plot hole, in that no one seems to have a job).  As Woodrow mends, Aiden busies himself by transforming the yellow '72 Buick Skylark into the oiled black, flame-throwing, tire squealing, muscle car that would raise the pulse of any Mad Max fan (I'm speaking from personal experience here).  The fact that Medusa shoots amazing plumes of flame makes it a one-up to the flamethrower.  Woodrow's passion is rising and he now needs bigger outlets to express it.  Of course, none of this may have been intentional, Even Glodell may have just thought fire was cool and I'm just wanking here.

The relationship between Aiden and Woodrow is really cute.  Aiden is the best friend a person could create, despite his initial presentation as the 'crazy asshole' buddy he is an impossibly caring and forgiving guy.  To list all of the thoughtful and selfless things Aiden does for Woodrow would take it's own paragraph and since you're supposed to actually watch this film, I'll leave it up to you.  The most telling though, besides buying and customizing the coolest car either character had ever seen only to give the keys to Woodrow without a thought, was perhaps Aiden's reaction when he finds out that Woodrow has been sleeping with the girl Aiden was interested in for most of the first half.  As it dawns on Aiden that Woodrow and Courtney have been sleeping together, Aiden congratulates his friend with false enthusiasm then kind of quietly says "You know I had a crush on her, right?"  After that, Aiden doesn't bring it up again, it is forgiven and forgotten.  Aiden's many, many good qualities make him feel a bit contrived, but he also acts as Woodrow's ground.

The film's bugfuck crazy second half is really what this is all about though.  The first half, while being beautiful in every way is still just a fairly typical boy meets girl story, albeit with a hint of the crazy that is about to come.  We jump ahead, Milly now has longer hair and Woodrow has some funny facial hair, Aiden has been abandoned by Woodrow, leaving him in a bad state of mind and Woodrow and Milly's relationship is stale.  Everything sucks.  Woodrow's motorcycle accident happens just after he catches Milly cheating, leaving him with a possible brain injury.  This injury plays a huge role in how the ending is interpreted, as Even Glodell refuses to state his intention for it.

After returning from the hospital Woodrow finds himself alone with a box of Milly's belongings.  He stares at the box and this is where we have to decide what's real and what's in his head.  Regardless, this is the  pivotal point, the moment where he either does something he regrets and that causes everything to come crashing down or he fantasizes about it, playing it out to a very grim end.  I believe he plays it out in his head and that once he reaches the end, the moment after he has done something extremely terrible to Milly and is crying in the street covered in her blood, he finds peace or at least acceptance.  He's kneeling in the street crying and Milly walks up, partially recovered from whatever it is he has done to her, and they share a blood soaked hug.  This is the moment when he comes to peace with what's happened to his relationship, but others would argue that this is the moment when he wishes he'd taken a different path earlier on.  I don't buy that though, as too much of the story feels off between the box burning and the hug.  I think Woodrow is hurting very badly and he's terrified that he has some form of brain damage so he is sitting there dreaming of this violent revenge.  As he fantasizes about this revenge his subconscious fills in the blanks with all the ways it could go wrong; Aiden kills Mike but then Aiden has to flee which leaves Woodrow alone, Courtney is willing to run off with Woodrow but then she kills herself when he rejects her.  Woodrow snaps back to reality and dismisses the idea of strapping on the flamethrower and walking across town, instead he takes the box to the beach and burns it quietly and without drama.  He needs that calm quiet finality, because he has matured in his thinking and he knows that acting out with these dangerous toys he's made will only make life worse.  He accepts his situation and he and Aiden leave California together.

Woodrow and Aiden leave California behind, which they initially moved to because "it would be a cool place to be when the end came."  When they leave, they are accepting the need to grow up, to leave some of their apocalyptic fantasies behind and refocus themselves on a new life.  As Aiden says, it's ok that it hurts.

There is so much on display in this film that I could write about it for days (and have, this post has taken a week, off and on to prepare to this point).  I don't know how much of it was intentional and how much of it was a coincidental spilling over of Even Glodell's psyche as he wrote the film, but either way it is a beautiful, stirring, and poignant story.  This film touched me in a very personal way, in the end it doesn't matter if it's a happy accident or not, either way the end result is a fantastic film, one I've enjoyed a little bit more each time I've watched it.  If, for some reason, you've read this but not yet seen the film, I'd encourage you to.  If you take from it even a fraction of what I did, I think you'll enjoy it.