Movie Review: Damsel

Damsel ** / *****

Directed by: David & Nathan Zellner.

Written by: David & Nathan Zellner.

Starring: Robert Pattinson (Samuel Alabaster), Mia Wasikowska (Penelope), David Zellner (Parson Henry), Nathan Zellner (Rufus Cornell), Joseph Billingiere (Zachariah Running Bear), Robert Forster (Old Preacher).

 

Damsel is one of those movies that seeks to deconstruct the genre it is a part of – but once you figured out what it’s trying to do, there’s much else of interest there. The ideas in the film are good – the performances are better, and cinematography capturing the vast, dusty plains if the old West are even better. And yet, it’s tough not to get the sense that this could have been a killer 30 minute short, but stretched out to nearly two hours, it’s more of a languid bore that anything else. You want to like it, because it’s clever and got its heart in the right place – it just never really gets off the ground. It’s a bad sign when the opening scene in the best in the movie – and also the only scene featuring the most interesting character in the whole film (played by Robert Forrester) – who leaves more on an impression than anyone else.

 

Damsel is a Western starring Robert Pattinson as Samuel Alabaster, a strange little man, who convinces Parson Henry (David Zellner) – who is just pretending to be a Parson – to come with him on a journey so that Samuel can marry his Honey Bun (he has a song about her) – Penelope (Mia Wasikowska). Samuel doesn’t tell Parson Henry a lot about this journey before hand – including that it will be a journey at all or that Penelope has been kidnapped and is being held by a man of pure evil. When we finally meet Penelope – half way through the movie – there’s even more differences. I won’t spoil much, but I will say she is not the Damsel in distress we are expecting. All the men in the movie insist on seeing her as that – but she doesn’t need rescuing. She’s the strongest, most self-reliant person in the film – and in her way, she pays for that as well.

 

The movie is split pretty much right down the middle – with Parson Henry being the constant between the halves. In the first half, Parson Henry is with Samuel, in the second, Penelope. In both halves, writers/directors the Zellner brothers delight in upending our expectations in the genre. Pattison gradually proves himself to be less and less of the typical Western hero than we expect him to be – and his introduction involves him and a miniature horse named Butterscotch, which means from the start you know something is off about him. The best scene in the movie – other than that opening – happens when Samuel and Penelope finally coming face to face halfway through the movie – and we understand exactly who both of them are. From there, it’s mainly confirmed that again and again. This does Wasikowska no favors, as we pretty much know everything we need to know about her in that scene – and then spend an hour just reconfirming that again and again.

 

I will say the performances are both very good. I have admired the career trajectory of Robert Pattinson – who has picked one interesting filmmaker after another to work with since the end of the Twilight series (David Cronenberg – twice, James Gray, David Michod, the Safdie brothers, Claire Denis) and he has pushed himself in those films, and sometimes been brilliant (he should have won an Oscar for Good Time). This is an odd performance – broad, yet specific, funny, strange and disturbing all at once. He has the opposite disadvantage that Wasikowska has – in that he has to hold back some things until that scene with her, and there’s nowhere really for the character to go. Wasikowska has always been best when playing strong, independent women – and she does that admirably here as well. You just wish the Zellners had something more interesting for her to do than roll her eyes as one asshole man after another assumes they know what’s best for her, that they want to protect her (fuck her is more likely) and are basically one step away from saying that they’re “nice guys” and don’t understand why women like her don’t like them.

 

The film though just never quite comes together – unlike the very strange Kumiko the Treasure Hunter, the last Zellner movie, which was as odd as this, but also had a more cohesive outlook. Damsel is a strange film. I just wish it was a more interesting one too.