Culture Blues

The Instant Movie Club: Franklyn

Every week, your friends at Culture Blues get together to watch a movie from their Netflix Instant queue. Then, they sit down over bangers and mash to discuss what they’ve just been through. This is The Instant Movie Club.

This week, we’ll be discussing Gerald McMorrow’s dystopian fantasy/melodrama Franklyn, starring Eva Green and Ryan Phillippe. If you haven’t seen it yet, you probably want to turn back now. The below discussion contains heavy spoilers.

Next Week: Flame and Citron – a Danish film about WWII resistance fighters. It was widely praised by critics as a taut, engaging thriller.

Spoilers below!

Jeremiah White: I am really bothered by movies that exist only to deliver one final "mind blowing" twist. I spent most of Franklyn’s runtime expecting it to be that kind of movie. There would be a big revelation at the end that would change everything that had come before it. Since I wasn’t invested at all in the numerous unrelated plots playing out, I was continuously on the lookout for clues as to what was “really” going on.

Then a strange thing happened. The big reveal never came. There is nothing that brings together the characters or makes their stories more compelling. Sure, there are a few surprises, but they are brought forth with very little fanfare. The biggest reveal is that Jonathan Preest is actually the missing mental patient and everything we’ve seen him do in Meanwhile City is actually something he’s done in the real world (although I assume with less choreographed fighting). All that did for me was render all those scenes as just the delusions of a madman.

So, the movie ends without a massive revelation. None of the characters have satisfying story arcs. Attempts to give the film some weight seem desperate and arbitrary (Preest’s quest to kill “the individual” is a prime example). In the end, I thought it was a big meaningless mess.

Meanwhile City’s religious system was actually the most interesting aspect to me. Sure, it’s silly and hokey, but it’s hard to imagine a scenario where Christians, Jews and Muslims would all agree that it isn’t important what you believe, so long as you subscribe to some organized religion, any organized religion. And perhaps just as hard to imagine is what would make those old school religions allow themselves to be placed on even footing with fly-by-night religions like the Seventh Day Manicurists that are seemingly created just to give the faithless an easy out. It’s too bad the movie doesn’t expand on any of the ideas it presents.

There are message board theorists out there talking about how Meanwhile City exists and is some sort of purgatory, and that the janitor is an angel and on and on. I think that’s all pretty wild speculation on their parts, taking what the movie offers and spinning their own narrative out of it. I didn’t care nearly enough to bother with any of that.

After a failed "suicide" attempt, Emilia goes on to create more "art."

Jeff Hart: When you boil it down, Franklyn is nothing more than your typical angst filled twenty-something in peril flick with some weird, and ultimately pointless, fantasy action thrown in to differentiate it. Your two leads are stock characters; Milo (Sam Riley) is the heartbroken nice guy trying to move past a broken engagement, and Emilia (Eva Green) is the suicidal artist that the world just doesn’t *sob* understand. Writer/director Gerald McMorrow attempts to give these two some layers over the course of the film, but they’re both just so unlikable (especially Emilia), it all falls flat. The one exception is Milo’s scene with his mother which I thought was one of the film’s few high points that didn’t involve Ryan Phillippe punching someone in the face.

Oh yeah – Ryan Phillippe. Intercut into all the banal quarter life crisis bullshit is Ryan Phillippe with a sack over his head, kicking ass in Meanwhile City. Like Jeremiah, I thought Meanwhile City and its myriad religions were hokey and on-the-nose. In fact, pretty much everything in Meanwhile City from Phillippe’s wannabe hard-boiled narration to the clerics patrolling the streets just screams bad allegory. The Phillippe scenes, and really Franklyn in general, just try so very hard to be philosophical and deep. It doesn’t work and was often embarrassing; like Emilia’s horrible art, or Carl Alter’s high school poetry.

All that said, the Meanwhile City scenes were still the best parts of the movie. They looked cool and Phillippe was jump-punching people in the face. What’s not to like? Unfortunately, they really taper off in Franklyn’s final act. Once we realize that Phillippe is just some grimy mental patient that somehow spent four years in an institution but never had to turn in his army issued sniper rifle the whole Meanwhile City business loses a lot of its charm.

I couldn’t bring myself to look at the IMDB message boards as I imagine Franklyn being over-analyzed Donnie Darko style, so I’m glad Jeremiah went there for me. As to the “Janitor is an angel” and “Meanwhile City is a real place” theories, I’d have to call bullshit. I think it’s made pretty clear in the film that Milo and Emilia are experiencing lesser forms of the same schizophrenia that Phillippe is. Then again, Emilia does see Phillippe in full Preest gear at the end, but I’m willing to chalk that up to a lazy ambiguity thrown in purposely by McMorrow as one last stab at depth. Anyway, Franklyn isn’t worth analyzing.

We're sure the hats serve a purpose aside from looking totally ridiculous.

Zachary Falk: C'mon Jeff, you didn't like the Johnny Depp police force of Meanwhile City? Clearly a statement that Depp has been setting back the progress of schizophrenics for years now.  Those guys probably gave me the biggest laugh, along with Phillippe's redundant, melodramatic narrations. Side note, my favorite line: "From a distance you'd never think this city is hopelessly insane" while set to a pan of Meanwhile City, the mecca of goth with its anger-inspired architecture shrouded in darkness.

I too had serious trouble getting into any of the storylines, each of which crawled along seemingly without any sense. I agree with Jeremiah that the world of religion for the sake of religion was perhaps the most intriguing aspect but remained as undeveloped as Emilia's thesis.

Anyone else have a reaction to the Iraq name drop in the mental institution scene? Maybe some sort of reminder to viewers that British soldiers have PTSD too. I thought that was kinda weird.

I find it difficult to have a passionate reaction to much else in this film. Meanwhile City is a fittingly hokey name for the setting, but I like saying it.  Jeff is right that those scenes were among the most entertaining. I just wish the movie could be re-done so that it is strictly a fantasy setting and not a depiction of how the homeless guy on my block sees the city we live in. Fill that imaginary setting with a whole new set of characters and actors, find a new script and we've got the makings of an instant classic, not an instant letdown.

Next Week: Flame & Citron