AllstonRockCity
Things to be aware of: This movie is a downer.This movie is interminably slow at times. Feel free to skip forward with the remote. There is not a lot of plot to miss.Having offered those two disclaimers, this movie is definitely worth watching if you are inclined towards depressing tales of urban outcasts. Like most, this one centers around a subculture, but is really about the kind of tragic dreamers that seem drawn to failure like moths to a porch light.What makes this story so compelling in spite of the rather amateurish acting and film-making is the gradual, offhand, and absolutely realistic ways in which the different characters casually dig themselves into ever more inescapable holes.This is a story not about the 80s or punk rock, it's a story about young people with unfocused ambition who are sucked in by the glamor of the scene, whatever it may be. These are the fashion victims we've all known: people who have a new best friend every week, with whom are going to write a screenplay, go on a road trip, start a band, whatever. The people who are too busy and too cool to be cared about unless you're going to make them famous, people who do not realize that the glittering lights of the city at night are just stores and bars, who keep thinking that one of them is going to turn out to be magic, who see everyday life as some kind of hoax that they won't be conned into falling for.What is beautiful about "Smithereens" is the perfect depiction of the blind, frantic pursuit of a better, purer, more exciting life that leads to the opposite. The sad, romantic naiveté that looks for rescue in a bar at 2am is a target for every kind of leech whose belief in magic has burned out and turned to cynical opportunism. The neophyte victims gradually and seamlessly become predators themselves, preying on others who are looking for late-night magic. Dreams of romance, fame, and adventure become grubbing squabbles over sex and money and these dreamers don't even see it happening until, disdainful of everything, they end up with nothing.
Peter Hayes
In the era of Punk rock (well when America caught on anyway!) a sensitive would-be artist (Brad Rijn) and a female street hustler (Susan Berman) have an uneasy relationship in the less fashionable part of NYC.Susan Seidelman had a surprise hit with Desperately Seeking Susan straight after this and then she took a career nose dive. Maybe she doesn't have the ability to shout cut or somehow or some way falls in love with her own work. Or maybe she is too in love with off-beats and losers.This shows some power of observation (all street cliché boxes ticked), but little narrative drive. Just a semi-documentary about a time and a place that I'd rather not have been in or (given a time tunnel) want to go back to.With no money, no major talent and a script that looks like it was written in a week there isn't much hope for it - unless you are so in love with the punk rock scene that anything that references it counts as entertainment.
Woodyanders
Ambitious, but aimless, amoral, abrasive and opportunistic Jersey girl hustler Wren (winningly played with considerable spunky panache by Susan Berman) tries desperately to break into the lower Manhattan music scene as a punk rock band manager, but since she has neither talent nor connections this proves to be a most difficult task to accomplish. While crashing around the city Wren makes the acquaintance of both Paul (a likable turn by Brad Rinn, who later starred in "Perfect Strangers" and "Special Effects" for Larry Cohen), a nice guy struggling artist who lives in his rundown jalopy of a van and Eric (a commendably fearless performance by punk icon Richard Hell of the Voidoids), a cocky, stuck-up narcissistic leech of a musician who ruthlessly uses other people to keep himself afloat.Directed with tremendously exciting style, verve and assurance by Susan Seidelman (who went on to helm "Desperately Seeking Susan" and several episodes of "Sex and the City"), this compellingly raw, gritty and funky little indie drama gem offers a very harsh, nightmarish and unflattering depiction of the East Village, pungently capturing the tart'n'tangy stench of urban squalor and despair in an unflinchingly stark and unsentimental manner (Seidelman's admirably obdurate refusal to either whitewash or romanticize the nastier aspects of the East Village punk culture is one of the movie's most substantial assets). The barbed, incisive script by Ron Nyswaner and Peter Askin relates the grim story in an engrossingly sharp, direct and brutally honest way, pulling no punches throughout and concluding things on a hauntingly downbeat note. Chirine El Khadem's rough, grainy, but dynamic and evocative cinematography, a first-rate thrashy'n'throbbing rock score by the Feelies, the often witty dialogue (favorite line: "Everyone's a little weird these days -- it's normal"), and the snappy editing further galvanize this thrillingly energetic film. An authentically scrappy and vibrant time capsule of the early 80's East Village bohemian punk alternative artistic fringe, "Smithereens" gets my highest possible recommendation.
MarquisDD
There's something about black and white checkered miniskirts in 1982 that sums up an entire era."Smithereens" documents a brief history of an archetype that many are familiar with: the Hip Urban Street Punk on a Path to Nowhere.What makes this film superb is that it treats the subject with a frank honesty rarely seen in such a genre. No happy endings, convoluted plot points or moral judgments are imposed upon Wren as she bumbles about New York trying to make her way.She is neither likable nor despicable. Belonging to no demographic, she creates her own. She has vague desires, but no goals. And as such an aimless character, the film's closing shot is quite perfect."Smithereens" is an engaging, refreshingly stark 'documentary' that does not gloss over its themes with the glitz and glitter otherwise prevalent in the early 80's. It successfully encapsulates a time and a lifestyle rarely portrayed correctly, except maybe in "Sid & Nancy".
AD
