Strawberry Mansion

There have been countless movies about dreams, but “Strawberry Mansion” is the only one save for “Inception” that turns them into a hustle. In this visually entrancing and innovative fantasy from co-directors KentuckerAudley and Albert Birney, the government forces citizens to record their nighttime journeys and imposes taxes on the unpredictable ingredients found within. In this independent movie Audley and Birney, who previously made the lo-fi comic odyssey “Sylvio” about a lonely gorilla with an online talk show, excel at grounding outlandish concepts in genuine emotional stakes.

“Sylvio” was just strange and charming enough to show the potential of a silly-poignant balance unique to their combined talent; “Strawberry Mansion” gets there, with a delightful and innovative oddball journey that overcomes its zany twists by taking them seriously. It doesn’t always work, but there’s so much fun in watching the gears turn that it hardly matters.

This independent movie was shot on video and transferred to 16mm, “Strawberry Mansion” looks like some kind of lost ‘80s vision buried in the dustbin of the rental store. The filmmakers blend their scrappy, intimate aesthetic with handmade special effects on par with the loose, stream-of-consciousness flow of the dreams at the center of the story, resulting in a playful, bittersweet blend that suggests Terry Gilliam on a micro-budget.

From its first moments, the independent movie makers jump straight into a bizarre near-future setting, where “dream auditor” James Preble (a bedraggled Audley) contends with some disturbing dreams of his own. Imagining himself trapped in a claustrophobic room baked in pink, he’s force-fed advertisements by a leering stranger (Linas Phillips) before waking up into an even more alienating reality.

James drifts through a vibrant world at odds with its hints of dystopia, from a robotic fast food restaurant serving “chicken shakes” to the clunky metallic headset he uses to view his targets’ dreams. His latest target sends him driving across the countryside to explore the dreams of affable elderly woman Bella, played by veteran Broadway actress Penny Fuller as a kindly presence whose gentle smile obscures a universe of secrets within her brain. Bella lives in a striking pink castle surrounding verdant scenery that, even by the standards of this far-flung backdrop, looks untethered from the world around it.

Settling into his work, James begins to sample them in piecemeal, donning the headset and roaming around her dreamscapes as a puzzled hologram to jot down the taxable items on display. His routine unfolds as a wondrous combination of capitalist satire and storybook conceit, as he watches a younger Bella (Grace Glowski, who memorably directed and starred in the similarly outré character study “Tito”) roaming through half-formed memories and strange characters while noting their cost. Just as James takes in the countryside of Bella’s youth (where he dutifully notes the 50 percent tax on a buffalo) and a bizarre date night that involves a giant frog waiter who plays the saxophone — yes, it’s a lot — he begins to realize that something’s off even by the standards in play: Some of the details are hazy, obscured by TV static, the result of some conspiratorial threat that Bella has managed to keep out of her dreams.

Explaining more about that side of the plot of this independent movie would ruin its wry commentary on the invasion of consumerism into every facet of daily life. Needless to say, the mild-mannered James suddenly finds himself at the center of dark forces beyond his control, and deeply concerned for Bella’s needs. When the woman suddenly drops out of the picture, her scheming adult son (Reed Birney) shows up to take charge of the situation, attempting to stop James from completing his work. That showdown turns up the surrealist volume as it plunges deeper into dreamland: James imagines himself trapped at sea, contending with rat sailors and a giant blue demon before transforming himself into a caterpillar, all in service of an unexpected quest to save Bella’s dreams from oblivion.

The premise of this independent movie “Strawberry Mansion” is both too clever by half and somewhat half-baked: Its dream vistas offer profound, inspired concepts that soar above a rather lightweight plot about star-crossed lovers in an unknown realm. Accept that simplicity and the movie is in fact a delicate wonder, with one of the most innovative depictions of dream logic since Michel Gondry’s “The Science of Sleep.” With Dan Deacon’s cosmic synth carrying the strange twists along, “Strawberry Mansion” works its way through an absurdist romance with palpable depth.

Even as it zigs and zags through several capricious twists, the movie feels grounded in a genuine desire for connection, as it was conceived in that foggy state between sleep and the waking world familiar to us all. Audley centralizes the movie around his constant uncertainty about the strange events around him. For over a decade, he’s been a reliable deadpan performer in low budget American cinema, from “Sun Don’t Shine” to “Christmas, Again,” who manages to combine passive-aggressiveness with pathos to spare. Here, he’s almost Buster Keaton-like in his fragile, confused state that follows him through multiple realms.

If “Strawberry Mansion” never fully shakes the impression of a half-formed idea, that itself reflects the unconscious state where it spends most of its 90 spellbinding minutes. The filmmakers do a lot with little and don’t try to hide it, providing a welcome contrast to the idea that effects-driven storytelling exclusively belongs within the costly realm of Hollywood spectacles. The independent movie has ethereal strengths that are baked into the concept, but they also enhance the finale, as the two worlds finally converge and James struggles to sort them out. Its closing moments suggest that dreams can be a dangerous distraction from waking life, but also the perfect escape from its harsher truths.’Take off’ Review: An Iranian Family Makes a Run for the Border in PanahPanahi’s Unforgettable Debut

A family excursion independent movie in which we never fully know where the movie is going (and are regularly deceived regarding the reason why), “Hit the Road” might be set in the midst of the winding desert parkways and flawless emerald valleys of northwestern Iran, however PanahPanahi’s inexplicable presentation is filled by the developing doubt that its characters have removed a significant diversion from our human curl eventually en route. “Where are we?” the silver haired mother (PanteaPanahiha) asks into the camera after awakening from a fretful catnap inside the SUV wherein such a large amount this film happens. “We’re dead,” squeaks the most youthful of her two children (Rayan Sarlak) from the secondary lounge, the six-year-old kid previously oozing probably the most anarchic film kid energy this side of “The Tin Drum.”

They aren’t dead – basically not in a real sense, regardless of whether the delightful homeless canine who’s tagged along is by all accounts barely hanging on – yet the further Panahi’s foursome drives from the lives they’ve abandoned in Tehran, the more it starts to appear as though they’ve left behind life itself. A purgatorial mist rolls in as they move towards the Turkish line, and with it comes a progression of semi-capable aides (one amusingly attempting to guide a motorbike from behind a sheepskin balaclava) who make an appearance to give the family unclear guidelines as though they were dumbfounded understudies for the ferryman on the stream Styx. An inestimable pall begins to shadow each scene, the characters becoming further and promote away from us with each remote chance until they’re (in a real sense) sucked into the gleaming pit of space.

We may never know in this independent movie why Khosro (Hassan Madjooni) and his better half so direly escaped their home to pirate 20-year-old Farid (Amin Simiar) out of the nation and away from the absolutist government their withdrawn first-conceived kid more likely than not outraged in some way, yet obviously this family is speeding down a single direction road. “We lost our home and we offered our vehicle for him to have the option to leave,” one parent cries to the next. “At any point do you consider the future?” And yet it’s the previous that is being relinquished to pay for it. Afterward, the young man will assess what is going on and inquire as to whether they’re cockroaches. “We are presently,” Khosro snorts accordingly, the greater part of his consideration zeroed in on the metal wire he’s utilizing to scratch at the toes standing out of his leg cast.

So it goes in a delightfully delicate parody that tears your heart in half with a featherlight contact – an independent movie that steers among misfortune and hangman’s tree humor with the master control of a trick driver, and intentionally disrupts each of its most pulverizing minutes with a dull joke to hold Khosro’s family back from running on empty. “Take off” is an anecdote about individuals who need to snicker to prevent themselves from crying, and Panahi focuses on that powerful with the unflinching devotion of somebody who realizes that his characters don’t have some other decision.

Taking into account that PanahPanahi is the child of the extraordinary independent movie producer JafarPanahi (actually prohibited from making motion pictures or leaving the nation), and that the late Abbas Kiarostami was more than a coach to him, his component introduction would appear to continue in the officially creative yet stylishly naturalistic practice of the Iranian film that raised him. Even more so on the grounds that show stoppers like “Taxi,” “A Taste of Cherry,” and, surprisingly, the Japan-shot “Like Someone in Love” depended on vehicles for their extraordinary capacity to explore the liminal highway among public and private spaces. But then, for every one of the recognizable fixings that Panahi blends in with the general mish-mash – the inconspicuous twists of self-reflexivity, his dad’s dry funny bone and wide political resistance, Kiarostami’s propensity for organizing basic emotional minutes in super wide remote chances – “Hit the Road” is crafted by a producer in full order of their own voice.

A portion of that is owed to Panahi’s shrewd visual style and millennial reference focuses (a running joke about “Batman Begins” supplements a more ruminative conversation of “2001: A Space Odyssey” and later a climactic “dubsmash,” assuming Instagram fathers are as yet utilizing that term), yet such a great deal his film’s extraordinary person comes from the actual characters. The morose and weak Farid – whose bid to get away from Iran drives this circular story – is maybe the main individual from his family who doesn’t leave a permanent imprint.

Panahiha’s chance as a mother in emergency is on the other hand perky and tweaking; one representation shot of her disguised against the fogs of time is to the point of singing this whole film into your memory. Madjoon’s curmudgeonly interpretation of Khosro is the sort of thing that seems like it could winding into sitcom cartoon without warning (“I tumbled down,” he moans when somebody asks how he hurt his leg. “From elegance”), yet his stumbling image of sadness comes from a profound well of fatherly despair. “You and your sibling are demolishing me,” he tells his “little fart” of a most youthful youngster, as though attempting to imagine that this entire film is definitely not a significant demonstration of adoration.

 

Perhaps he would rather not let Farid in on how much his family is forfeiting for him, or perhaps Khosro simply doesn’t have any desire to let it out to himself. There was adequate space for Panahi to focus all the more light onto that vulnerability in a 93-minute independent movie that possibly loses energy when it tips into unclearness, however what improvement could it have made eventually? Khosro’s decision is now made for him. It’s telling that our main clear knowledge into his psyche comes during a discourse he conveys level on his back and half off of his mind, his most youthful child lying level across his stomach and going all over with each exhausted breath.

Independent movie : Espresso Films (moviesbyespresso.com)

That little pipsqueak is something else Panahi lifts from his father and the more extensive practice of Iranian independent movie: The hyper-charming, fantastically irritating child whose real essence is unstoppable to the point that he turns into a mirror fit for mirroring the most unfathomable realities of his general surroundings. In addition to the fact that Simiar delivers perhaps the most all around aligned kid execution you’ll at any point observer, his vile blamelessness (and related disarray over Farid’s looming “marriage”) additionally gives an ideal stabilizer to the excruciating substantialness that follows his family the whole way to the Turkish boundary. His screechy voice dulls the solemness out of each horrendous quietness, a propensity that takes care of multiple times over during a dramatic grouping that Panahi catches in a lifelike model like super wide shot; squint and you can see the kid’s little outline attached to a tree somewhere far off, thrashing against the destinies as his mom makes an arrangement with Satan on the most distant side of the edge.

It’s a second that solidifies how “Hit the Road” is at its best while at the same time working in two distinct cog wheels. The misery of misfortune is balanced by the crude energy of life, the particular subtleties of Farid’s break dovetail with the widespread grief of giving up a kid to the grown-up world, and the distressed tones of a glimmering piano become roadkill for – in the expressions of a young man staying his whole chest area out of a SUV’s sunroof as it speeds across the desert pads – “BLISS!!!” You’ll know how he feels, regardless of whether that feeling smashes down on you with a weight that Simiar’s personality will not need to bear until he’s more seasoned. “Whenever you see a cockroach,” his father puts it at a certain point, “recollect that his folks sent him out into the world with bunches of trust.”