Valley of the Dolls

David Jacobson's Down in the Valley, which seems headed to a rather predictable showdown between Harlan, the out-of-place cowboy in San Bernandino Valley, who's come to rescue Tobe from her suffocating cop of a dad. It appears to be about which way Tobe, the girl with gumption, will go. She leans to Harlan, who she found by accident, working at a gas station, barely making ends meet.

But somehow, after a key point in the film, the story switches to what will happen to Lonnie, the shy younger brother of Tobe, who latches on to her, for fear of being by himself. Why does Harlan take an interest in him? Does he see Lonnie as his own alter ego. Where he may have been in love with Tobe, he sees rescuing Lonnie as a form of rescuing himself?

In some ways, this film felt like a deconstruction of a Western. Harlan's come to rescue the girl and her brother from an oppressive dad. The themes aren't exactly out of a Western, but the notion of putting the law in your own hands is. Yet, unlike traditional Westerns that took life in the West as given--no one in Bonanza ever questioned why they lived out West, there is a question as to why Harlan lives life as a cowboy, since it's hinted that this lifestyle may indeed be artificial, a fabrication of his own mind. He as much hints this is so, by saying you have to do what set your mind to.

For a moment, it appears he has willed his fantasy into reality. As Harlan runs off with Lonnie, they appear to have headed into the past. To be fair, it seems like they've run into something like a civil war re-enactment, so it never quite slips into magic realism. The magic is broken when they realize they are on a studio set.

I've read a review that says the film is a pronouncement on the views of masculinity, but it may be as much a reflection on what we want to be and what we are. Wade is a war hero of sorts. He believes in history. He collects guns. To some extent, Harlan has also looked backwards in time, but he does so to escape his own past, and his past in muddled.

Seemingly abandoned by his parents, he may have been raised by Joe who appears to be a rabbi. Yet, he's not embraced Judaism, well, not so that I can tell. He refers to Joe and writes to him, but somehow can't live that life.

There's a question why Tobe stays with her dad. Does she prefer the stability her dad offers? He's grounded in the present, yet, she, much like Harlan, longs to escape her reality. Harlan, on the other hand, appears to have had a desolate past, one filled with foster homes with parents who didn't love him and may have abused him (and yet how does Joe fit into this?). Harlan lives lies and tells them too, and yet, we partly forgive him because he philosophizes about life. Wade is bland.

To Jacobson's credit, he makes both views credible. It's the kind of decision we all face in life, to be who society wants us to be, or to have the freedom to do whatever we want, even if the consequences are that we can't survive in society. In the end, reality wins, and yet both Tobe and Lonnie long for the kind of fantasy life that Harlan seems to offer, even if it's really illusory.

I'm making this sound heavy, which it isn't. It's possible to view this as a film where two guys are pissed at each other, and fight over something meaningless. It could have slipped into something cliche, and yet it doesn't. It borrows from historical imagery, from the obvious cowboy themes, to Taxi Driver, to Les Miserables.

It's hard to say what conclusion we're meant to draw from the film, but it's nonetheless fascinating to talk about.