U-Turn. 1997. Directed by Oliver Stone.

(9/25/00-9/26/00))

The avant-garde quality of U-Turn is asserted in the titles, some of which look as if they were scratched onto the film a la Stan Brakhage. And the film bombards the viewer with images, edited together in many cases in terms of associations. Once the style is accepted I think it enlivens the film, brings an energy to it which it might not have otherwise. And there is a conventional plot here which is "charged up" by Stone's editing style.

It didn't wow me like it did in 1998, but it still felt like a pretty powerful film. The story is pure Gothic. It reminds me of Faulkner more than anything else, although there are definitely traces of film noir. A guy's care breaks down near a desert town. We learn that he is in debt to criminals and has had two fingers amputated. He gets involved with a husband and wife, each of whom wants to kill the other. He eventually kills the husband (in conjunction with the wife) and then learns that she has also been sleeping with the Sheriff and talking about running away with him. It ends with the girl dead and a dying Bobby stranded in a broken-down car in the middle of the desert.

It's a nightmare and pretty strong stuff. Bobby is thrown into a town full of crazy people. Nothing is what it seems to be and every thing goes wrong--he is thwarted at every turn. One of the great moments ion the film is when Bobby finally gets the precious bus ticket which will get him out of town. And what happens? He meets up with this guy who has been trying to start a fight with him and who tears up the ticket and eats it. The meanest trick of all is that Grace, the damsel in distress, turns out to be a psychotic who might turn around and murder him at any moment.

Then there is the wise old Indian. He may be wise and talk engagingly, but the Indian doesn't have anything helpful to offer. Is he really blind? He seems to look at the coins in his cup, but I'm not sure about that. His story about his blindness changes. First, it was because of the Vietnam war, but then he had acid poured in his eyes by the relatives of a girl he seduced. He takes off his glasses and shows Bobby, so maybe he really is blind.

Among the other characters in U-Turn, the auto mechanic is truly a frightening figure. What is really interesting about him is that he becomes uglier-looking as the film goes on--his grimy face gets blacker and blacker and his teeth become more repulsive. He holds the power to keep Bobby a prisoner or to set him free. And he wants money that Bobby doesn't have--and he has a knack for finding ways to increase the bill as time goes on.

Then there is the young girl who throws herself at Bobby. She seems to really like him, but when Bobby finally runs out of patience and punches out her boyfriend she quickly changes siodes, showing that her interest in Bobby was just to challenge her boyfriend (who, incidentally, isn't as tough as he would have us believe). The females are not to be trusted and sex is linked to violence and death.

I think the moment in U-Turn that moved me the most comes when Bobby finds out that Grace's husband whom he just murdered was actually her father. (She believes, too, that he murdered her mother.) She talks about having been raped repeatedly as a child and says something like, "All I wanted was to be a kid. And he took that away from me." That is a powerful and painful moment.

I suppose that U-Turn could be interpreted like Seizure--these folks that Bobby meets up with are arechetypal, demons emerging from his subconscious or the collective unconscious. In that regard it is especially significant that it all takes place in the desert. The desert is traditionally a place to go to have vgisions, to do pathworkings and to confront demons.

Bobby tells Grace that he has had bad luck with women, implying that women have not treated him well. When he needs money he tries contacting former girlfriends who brush him off, suggesting that he hasn't treated them well. So we really don't know the truth about all that.
U-Turn paints a very bleak picture of relationships and social interaction in America, albeit in wildly exaggerated fashion. Incest, greed, exploitive relationships, murder. It's all there: in our fantasies, in our stories and in our world.