Capital Celluloid 2015 - Day 262: Sat Sep 19

Buzzard (Potrykus, 2014): Rio Cinema, 11.30pm


This film screens as part of the Scalarama season throughout September. You can the full details of all the films being shown through the month here.

Chicago Reader review:
Buzzard
is the latest film by Michigan native Joel Potrykus and the final installment of his "animal trilogy" (which includes the 2012 feature Ape and the 2010 short Coyote). Buzzard is an endearingly strange, pitch-black comedy of errors, a singular vision of the working poor's barbaric fringes. The remarkable Joshua Burge—lead actor in both Ape and Coyotestars as bug-eyed, greasy-haired Marty, a dispirited, neo-Dickensian temporary office worker idly stationed at a nondescript mortgage company. At home in his dingy apartment, he exploits company refund policies and corporate giveaways for cash and prizes, in part to make ends meet but also for the joy of fucking with the system, any system. Marty's small-time scams are a hoot, but when one ill-planned ruse lands him in deep trouble (or so he thinks, paranoia being one of the film's essential elements), he flees to Detroit in desperation and the laughs subside.

Marty is reprehensible, but Burge roots his alarming behavior in relatable fears. Goofing around with a homemade glove of blades, a la Freddy Krueger of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Marty slices his hand open; just another blue-collar millennial without health insurance, he fakes a work accident to receive workers' comp. Life's basic comforts elude him, forcing him to rely on his wits; he's the poster boy for the scavenger class, backed into a corner and dangerously short of options. His anxiety is reflected in Potrykus's camerawork, which often recalls the intensity and immediacy of guerrilla filmmaking. But behind the amateurish aesthetic lies a director with high-art sensibilities who uses Buñuelian surrealism to undercut the film's verisimilitude. Like Potrykus, Burge shows great daring, his performance a high-wire act of ballistic anomie and genuine empathy; we may find Marty repugnant, but only because we fear ending up like him, a disillusioned hellion desperate for a way out. 
Drew Hunt 

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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