Review of Dear Wendy

Introduction

Richard (Jamie Bell) or Dickie as he`s known to all and sundry lives in a small backwater American town. His father wants him to work the mine like every other `man` in town, but Richard has a delicate constitution and ends up in the local store. One day Richard is forced to buy a birthday present for someone he doesn`t like, and during a visit to a local junk shop picks out a toy gun. Being a pacifist, Richard has second thoughts about his choice of gift and gives a naff book instead, leaving the gun lying around in his house and promptly forgets about it.

After his father dies, Richard inherits the house and cleans it up. He finds the gun and starts to carry it around, even taking it to work with him. His friend Stevie (Mark Webber) sees it one day and asks him why he carries a gun if he`s a pacifist. Richard dismisses the question as it`s only a toy gun, but Stevie knows different and gives Richard all the technical specs on the gun. The two of them form a small gun appreciation club, practice shooting in secret and soaking up information on guns. The two find that carry their respective guns with them actually increases their confidence and both find their lives changing for the better. They feel good about themselves in a macho miner community and others start to treat them with a bit more respect.

Then Richard decides that it is both of their duties to share the knowledge they have gained and so call together some of the town`s other `losers`. Huey (Chris Owen), Susan (Alison Pill) and Freddie (Michael Angarano) are all called to a meeting where the five decide to join forces and form a secret society that will benefit them all. Christening themselves The Dandies, they build a temple in an old abandoned part of the mine and learn about guns, perform rituals and, more importantly, shoot. Shooting is done only in the dark. The Dandies believe that if a gun is fired in the cold light of day, you awaken it and it reverts to its primary goal: to kill. Each member of the group finds themselves growing and gaining respect, as well as becoming expert shots.

Then Sheriff Krugsby (Bill Pullman) brings Sebastian (Danso Gordon) to Richard`s house. Sebastian has been in real trouble, he shot someone, and Krugsby feels that Richard is the ideal person to keep an eye on him. Richard reluctantly takes on the task, and eventually succumbs to introducing him to The Dandies. They don`t know it yet, but everything starts to change and a reckoning is coming…

Video

Picture is clear as you would expect, with some imaginative overlay of various ballistics diagrams, maps, etc. Also some wholesale `borrowing` from the likes of CSI of forensic shots showing the impact of gunshot trauma.

Audio

DTS track that seems largely redundant for a long time as the film is essentially dialogue-driven. This changes when Jamie Bell puts the `needle to the record` for the first Zombies track, vinyl hiss has never sounded so good. The music that is used never seems obtrusive, always sounding as if it`s coming from another source like the record player or someone`s radio in the background. I haven`t been so impressed by a film`s sound design in a long time. There is also sporadic narration from Bell`s character talking to `Wendy` in much the same terms as a young man writing to a lost lover.

Features

Letters to Dear Wendy - making of featurette that is a bit more interesting than the usual EPK. Interview footage with all the main players.

Director and Screenwriter - extended interview with Thomas Winterberg and Lars von Trier, some of the footage repeated from the main featurette.

Deleted Scenes - coming with optional commentary (and some largish gaps), this motley collection also includes an alternate ending.

Assorted trailers and TV spots

Conclusion

Wow. What a film. I was hugely impressed by this once the credits started rolling, and even now can`t think of any major flaws in it. I haven`t seen any films by either von Trier or Winterberg, but they have pulled the proverbial rabbit out of the hat with this one. It`s a devasting rebuke of small town America, the need of youth to stand out and, of course, the devotion to the gun culture that helped to inspire the catch-phrase "From my cold, dead hands…"

The obvious conclusion that you can take from this film is that it is a direct criticism of the fabled US gun culture, as referred to above, but it`s so much more than that. It`s more about the disenfranchisement of American youth, particularly those in a small town who just can`t live up to expectations. The coming together of youth and guns brings with it the child-like obsession with weapons and the thirst for knowledge as well as the sense of power and confidence that carrying a gun might bring you (although falsely, as if you take away the gun, the whole deck of cards collapses…). This group feel on top of the world, out of their shells and ready to both dress foppishly and look everyone in the eye unflinchingly.

The acting in this film is superb. The whole cast are just brilliant, but special praise should go to both Jamie Bell and Bill Pullman. Bell pulls a truly terrific performance out of the bag here, if you didn`t know any better you`d think he`d lived in a town like this all his life. His character is obsessed with a gun called Wendy, he obsesses over her and talks to her in such a way that you think he either truly loves her or is seriously unhinged. The truth is clearly somewhere in the middle. As well as loving Wendy, it`s clear that Richard has feelings for Susan but doesn`t act on them. The arrival of Sebastian causes massive internal conflict for Richard. It`s not bad enough that Susan is drawn to the newcomer, but when Sebastian breaks the cardinal rule of the group and fires Wendy, Richard goes mad. He rejects Wendy in much the same way as a man whose lover has been unfaithful, and also starts to feel more of an outsider of the group he started as his friends get closer to Sebastian. Pullman is there to provide a serious supporting role and is the father figure that the group needs, even if they never admit it. He`s not in the film as much as you might think, but his presence is a powerful one. Special thanks go also to Alison Pill who briefly shows us, and Bell, just how much she has grown as a person since becoming a Dandie.

What struck me most about this film is just how banal both the whole situation and life is in general. The overall `mission` is one of the most banal I have ever seen; high-level military planning by The Dandies to escort eldery, frightened Clarabelle on a 2 minute walk to have coffee with her friend. The local town square divided into section that each of the group stands watch over to protect the eldery woman from non-existent danger. Obviously it all goes horrendously wrong, and from a quite unexpected source as well, and then we move swiftly onto the big showdown at the end in a mix of High Noon and Gunfight at the OK Corral. Even so, there is something inherently flawed in the mindset of these kids, and you can`t help but wonder if the kids responsible over the years for some horrendously tragic school shootings felt the same way that these kids do.

The ending itself can be taken a couple of ways. The way the group of youngsters goes up against legions of law enforcement is quite surreal, Richard and co. believing in their personal invincibility and the rightness of their mission due to carrying a gun; never doubting it, even as they start to fall against superior firepower. Conversely this could actually be seen as a comment on American power and their methods of going to war. The US never goes to war against an enemy on a level with themselves, always against lesser equipped or inferior numbers. Where there is one enemy, so the US advances with fifty, guns blazing. So we have 5 youths with handguns against seemingly hundreds of law enforcement officials with automatic weapons. The youths get off less shots overall than the number of fingers on their hands, the return firepower for such a small number of opponents is both extremely powerful and overwhelming, but clearly unnecessary.

A strange, powerful film that is quite absurd but unmissable…