DIRECTED BY: Drew Barnhardt
FEATURING: Luke Sorge, Brenna Otts, Reggie De Morton, Gena Shaw, Steve Van Beckum
PLOT: Paul has been dishonorably discharged from the military and relies on his sister’s hospitality for a couch to crash on; when she recommends a therapist to help him with PTSD and alcohol addiction, he encounters a sordid world where revenge and unhealthy fantasy experiences can be bought for the right price.
COMMENTS: As I gear up for my third trip to the Fantasia Film Festival, I am unfortunately reminded that most of what I’ll be seeing up North won’t be available again for months (and months), if it’s released at all. With that in mind, I look back at my original gob-smacked review and consider whether or not Rondo lives up to the hype I expressed directly after my original “live” experience. In brief: it does.
My earlier review covers most of the bases, but I wanted to expand on how well Barnhardt manages Rondo‘s singular atmosphere. Its edge-of-realistic set-pieces present a grisly and tragic tale that are undercut by a narrator that borders on intrusive. Much to my shame, I hadn’t seen Stanley Kubrick‘s Barry Lyndon until some months ago, well after I nodded in understanding at Barnhardt’s remarks on it during my interview with him. Like the Kubrick epic, Rondo involves a string of events that, though much more in the vein of “thriller”, have a tone that’s on the unsettling side of banal—until, in both films, an impressively indifferent narrator articulates his views on the action. As I have no doubt that Barnhardt would quickly dispel any suggestion he’s at Kubrick’s level, I’ll merely say that Rondo has the feel of a whomping dubstep echo of Barry Lyndon‘s awkwardly laid-back narrative meanderings.
Without dispersing too much insider knowledge (I spoke with both Barnhardt and Guy Clark, the producer, for close to an hour after the interview proper was finished), I can tell you that Rondo was made for substantially less than its shiny veneer and honed camerawork suggest. Indeed, a large part of its modest budget went to the… expressive use of squibs in a pivotal scene. But like a sculptor given a slim brick of marble, Barnhardt (who also wrote the script, scouted locations, and was heavily involved in the casting of largely unknown actors) manages to chisel a tiny objet d’art: it’s charmingly crafted, bloodily lighthearted, impressively detailed, and the whole thing fits conveniently on your desk (or perhaps your knife-filled kitchen sink).
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
