(This has a couple of expletives in it, and weird film discussion. You're warned)
But I haven’t said much about the film, really. Well, let’s
rectify that. It’s an incredible achievement. Like the aborted feature Kill Whitey! in it, TTTC was
funded by Kickstarter. With a skeleton crew, Andrew flew to Ghana and, quite
simply, got this film made…somehow.
There are moments during the running time when it seems that, like the
production itself, Andrew will simply fall apart. But it never happens,
obviously. Andrew gives a fine performance as his own fevered alter ego Alby
Wrangler, by turns sensitive, vulnerable, enraged, lonely, hateful, and
satisfied-film-nerdy. It’s actually quite an incredible performance, scary as
Hell in places, with the depth of unrestrained Dennis Hopper-level rage occasionally
on display. He really put himself through the wringer to make this film, and it
shows.
I really enjoyed Kristen Condon’s excellent turn as
Wrangler’s pretentious, obnoxious, racist, mendacious, drunken fiancée
Chantalle, who also manages occasionally to pierce his swaddling celluloid
cocoon with some harsh truthful words. Kiefer Findlow was great as the
long-suffering, eye-rolling cameraman Cody, and you could see there were points
where he was trying hard not to laugh at the madness being haphazardly thrown
up onscreen. There’s basically not a bad performance in the whole film, and the
innocent merriment of the excited Kumasi residents appearing in it (the shyly
grinning lassie with the clapperboard!) add an unforced welcome layer of depth
and warmth to the whole affair.
From the African contingent, the 29-year-old midget who
looks 12, Gideon Korang, was great, and looked like he was having a lot of fun,
especially when Andrew got his face tattooed onto his arm in real life. Ninja
is not given all that much to do a lot of the time, though he is very good in
his role. He is ecstatic when he first meets Wrangler, but after watching the
crazed, near-insane Australian director literally poorly wrangling a bizarre
production together, and have his personal life fall apart, he grows much less
accommodating of his white guest. Ninja often looks confused by what he is
seeing, the unravelling of a film plot in the head only one man can (maybe) understand,
and it’s hilarious to have him sit down in an interview in-film and basically
say he has zero clue what Wrangler’s (Andrew’s) vision is, or what he is trying
to do.
I found myself occasionally wondering this throughout the
whole film, to be honest. I have no idea what the African film crew were
expecting when Andrew got there, and wondered how much they actually understood
of what the Hell was going on at some points. But I also got the feeling that’s
what Andrew was feeling as well, confused and clueless and in real pain (his
mother tragically died during the filming, which is somewhat uncomfortably
transposed into the running time in a couple of places; the production is
dedicated to her), so it’s all part of a bigger demented whole. The film slides in and out of reality constantly, so we never quite know if what we're meant to be watching is reel or real or both, and that's all well and fine and good.
I don’t know if Andrew got a permit to shoot, something which is addressed in the film, but it looks like a lot of the film was shot on the fly. I suppose if you have an international Kickstarter, you can’t just creep into a country with a camera crew unannounced. But the difficulties Wrangler experienced in the film bring to mind all the madness and blood-tears wept by directors during other shoots: Apocalypse Now (referenced a few times), Fitzcarraldo, The Last Movie…the list goes on. You could maybe add the deeply contentious, Africa-set mondo movie Goodbye Uncle Tom as a fourth-wall-breaking reference point, were you so inclined.
Andrew simultaneously manages to
take the piss like a catheter out of the whole ‘director on the edge’ hackneyed
premise…and to be that person in real life. I told him it was a gonzo Heart of
Darkness, and I meant it. Luckily he didn’t suffer a heart attack on the set
like Martin Sheen did in Apocalypse Now, but Andrew does hilariously parody
Sheen’s drunken mirror-punching crack-up by getting pissed and eating
cornflakes from a box, inconsolable.
Aesthetically, and psychologically, there are a few
different films and figures who loom large in the twisted film tapestry that
this film comprises: Brian Trenchard-Smith (whom I would imagine Andrew can
relate to because of his Australian exploitation filmmaking escapades, as well
as his time moving round different countries as a child), Weng Weng (TTTC is basically Andrew
getting to direct the long-dead Filipino midget in an exploitation film in his
own mind; he even has Gideon appear in a scene on a bed with a woman, spouting
dialogue from For Y’ur Height Only, and there are multiple other Weng refs) and
Quentin Tarantino, who gets mentioned multiple times during the film. Andrew
seems to have a love-hate relationship with the obnoxious motormouth American’s
films and, indeed, as film nerd competition from a video shop background, his
existence in general.
I would have to say, though, that, seeing as Andrew doesn’t
live in Israel now, hasn’t gone full Zionist, and doesn’t have to dodge
explosions in a bomb shelter, he wins on general life points. The Taller They
Come is partly an angry, fuck-you-I’m-indie-til-death middle finger gesture to
Tarantino and his tired ‘film remix’ plagiarist drivel, making the deeply
personal project that the American would make if he had the guts or insight to
do so.
Or maybe he wouldn’t.
Who knows? Or cares.
Be interesting to see what he would make of it, though. Doubt he’d
like the “Fuck Tarantino!” line at least.
Morally, sometimes this film seems to exist in a slightly
grey area. There are non-PC jokes that could be considered racist, except there
is absolutely no race hate in the film – except towards white people, from
white people (very American!) – so I had no real problem with it. A lot of the
literal off-colour humour is black and vicious and very, very funny. The film
Wrangler directs ‘remaking’ The Harder They Come only has a handful of
recreated scenes in this film. I had never seen the Jimmy Cliff film, and
watched it for this review as research, so I understood what was being
referenced. Without that knowledge, however, scenes like the one where Gideon
is tied to a bed and whipped by a cop – mirroring one in THTC, for an assault
also recreated in TTTC – would seem bizarre and racist coming from a white
filmmaker.
But that’s ultimately the thing about The Taller They Come.
Only film obsessives are truly going to get where it’s coming from, and it will
leave a lot of others cold and confused. The occasionally slightly contentious
subject matter might get discussed in the mainstream media, which would be a
good thing for PR for the film, so maybe I should try and start the fake rumour
that it’s irredeemably racist filth. Certainly get the net nuts screaming blue
bloody murder.
Or…maybe not.
(Laughing)
Ultimately, The Taller They Come is an amazing achievement, a tall tale told tried and true. It’s actually incredible that this film got made at all. Andrew Leavold manages to juggle so many personal and cinematic plates during the running time, without any of them really smashing, it’s crazy. It sprints along, constantly being new and inventive, mocking dubbing and subtitling and foreign titling and, well, you’ll just need to see it for yourself. For film buffs, this truly is a poignant, coruscating, warm-guttywut-feeling symphony. Others less familiar with niche cinema will take whatever they want from it. The more things change.
But I truly do think Andrew has created a real living, breathing work of art with this one. It's going to take a while to catch on, and will catch a lot of flak and cause a lot of chaos and division until it does...but it will catch on eventually, trust me. The self-satisfied supposed trendsetter film nerds will squeal and scream and gibber the worst, presented with something they have no currently available critical roadmap for. They have no gatekeeper to look to for acceptance guidance, and don't have enough courage to just leap into the celluloid void and like what they like and the Hell with likes or being liked for it. And Andrew and his incredibly strange film crew will just laugh all the way to the weird film credibility bank as the lights come up in the illuminating post-screening confusion.
The usual chaos.
One thing’s for sure, though. Having exhausted his
early-life store of tropes and cinematic tricks and references, it will be
very, very interesting to see what Andrew Leavold comes up with next. He’s
already directed feature-length fictional films like Lesbo-A-Go-Go from earlier on in his
career. But this is a work of almost forced maturity, and he’s not the same
person by any means as he was when he started making it. The trajectory of his
skewed-genius career has been a zigzag, mystifying, and, again that word, unique one. I can’t wait to see what the
rest of his films will be like. But Andrew, please, just promise me one, er,
wee thing:
No more midgets, anklebiters, kneecappers, navelgazers, shortarses, little people, whatever they call them, eh?
That time is dead and gone, officially as of now.
“Deliver the goods, above and beyond creative and fiscal expectations. Mr Reliable is a popular guy. Specialise in the difficult. No task too great, no budget too small. Work breeds work, particularly if you leave your producers smiling rather than unhappy. Low-budget genre film making does not mean you have to check your personality at the door” – Brian Trenchard-Smith.
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