Laurie Anderson – Memphis Flyer

Heart of A Dog (2015; dir. Laurie Anderson)—I own two dogs. Stanley, an 11-year old lab/Great Dane/blue heeler mix, is still loud and spry. He’s also tumorous and gray-haired and has kidney problems. He could go any time within the next year. Lucy is a cute but neurotic 9-year old mini pit-bull who’ll probably expire from despair when Stanley goes. Some days their eventual partings from this world weigh on me more than most of my human problems.

So yes, Anderson’s latest provides wise, humane advice about end-of-life pet care, and I’m grateful for that. But Heart of A Dog does a lot of other things, too. What it doesn’t do is behave like a traditional film. The handful of people who bolted the theater midway through the screening I attended last week could probably attest to this—clearly they weren’t expecting something so plotless (and smart and digressive and profound). It doesn’t behave as a museum installation or a long-form music video, either, even though the soundtrack album is literally the soundtrack to the whole movie. On her website, Anderson calls Heart of A Dog a “piece.” That sounds about right. Something to hold in your hand, turn over, put back on the shelf, and stuff in your pocket absent-mindedly one afternoon only to rediscover hours or months later.

The late, great essay-film specialist Chris Marker, whom Anderson thanks in the closing credits, is one obvious inspiration; the whispering narrator from Godard films like Two or Three Things I Know About Her is another. But Anderson is a kinder, gentler, funnier and less theory-sodden guide. If you can approach her speculations, jokes and mysticism with the same smiling awe you can hear in her voice, then you’ll have a real cool time together. In little more than an hour, Anderson links up global surveillance, her loving relationship with her rat terrier Lolabelle, sorrowful nights spent in the children’s burn unit, her prickly relationship with her mom and the inherently “creepy” nature of storytelling. She talks a lot about death, too, which lingers in the background like the smell of a previous tenant. Her ground- and eye-level re-enactments and re-imaginings of past events are often veiled by sleet, snow and rain, as though she’s observing them from a safe distance behind glass. She heeds The Tibetan Book of The Dead’s instructions and refuses to cry. By doing so, she makes you “feel sad without being sad.”

Heart of A Dog is a mellow little mongrel bred from words, pictures and ideas. It includes at least two pieces of quotable wisdom—“Death is the release of love” and “Most adults have no idea what they’re talking about”—and one worthwhile existential question: “Are you perhaps made of glass?” It saves its best music for last, too; one of Anderson’s final images is a photo of Lolabelle and her late husband Lou Reed, whose “Turning Time Around” provides an appropriate postlude.

Grade: A

Heart Of A Dog plays tonight, Wednesday, December 16 at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

On Thursday, September 11th, Outflix 2014 closes with Test, the second feature from San Francisco writer/director Chris Mason Johnson. In 2014, 30 years into the AIDS epidemic, the disease has been demystified. Even if it’s not curable, there are reasonably effective treatments available, and the cause and methods of prevention are well known. But, as Test reminds us, the world of 1985 was very different. The disease had only been described in the scientific literature in 1981, and when it burst into public consciousness it caused a wave of anti-gay hysteria.

Frankie (Scott Marlowe) is a struggling gay dancer who lives in San Francisco at the height of the AIDS panic. Since there was much early confusion as to how the disease was spread, homosexuals had yet another stigma to deal with. Frankie’s neighbors who know he is gay give him a wide berth on the street. At rehearsals, straight dancers are afraid to come into contact with the sweat of gay dancers. Headlines ask, “Should Gays Be Quarantined?” Among Frankie’s gay friends, there is confusion and suspicion. Some, like Bill (Kevin Clark), Frankie’s fellow dancer, carry on as usual, even hustling on the side to make ends meet. But Frankie, like most people, is confused and scared. His feelings become even more complicated when he strikes up a relationship with his neighbor Walt (Kristoffer Cusick), and when the first HIV blood test becomes available, he is torn between the impulse to be safe and the horror that he might receive a death sentence.

Test

Test is at its best when director Johnson goes atmospheric, such as the exceptionally photographed and choreographed dance sequences. Marlowe is an excellent dancer and fine, square-jawed eye candy. Scenes when he strolls pensively through the San Francisco streets listening to ’80s gems by Bronski Beat, Laurie Anderson, and Memphis’ own Calculated X, work great to set the mood of paranoia and uncertainty. But the first-time actor’s stiffness becomes apparent in scenes with people with more extensive resumes, such as his forays into San Francisco’s legendary gay bar scene. But overall, the film’s combination of backstage drama and history lesson makes for a compelling package.