Milwaukee. A chronicle of how Mark Borchardt, a movie enthusiast, is trying to shoot and complete his short horror film, “Coven”, using only his friends and volunteers, including the often drunk Mike. Numerous problems plague the production, including a lack of financing and Mark’s broken relationship with his ex-girlfriend, with whom he has three kids. Intermittently, Mark works in a cemetary, a toilet, etc. After three years, “Coven” premiers at a local independent cinema, and attracts a solid crowd.
For every director that makes it, there are hundreds that don’t. This excellent documentary follows Mark Borchardt who tries to make it by completing his independent short film, and the events are both funny and tragic at the same time: at first, you laugh at all the absurd obstacles preventing a man from achieving his dream; and then you feel saddened by all the absurd obstacles preventing a man from achieving his dream. As “Ed Wood” and “Living in Oblivion” demonstrated, sometimes the process of making a movie is more fascinating than the sole movie in question, and watching “American Movie” is an inexplicably cozy experience: a great deal for this probably lies in Mark himself, who is such an energetic and unique character to watch, since he has a clear vision of what he wants, it is just that the limitations of fatalism are always his hurdle. He is like a General without an army.
The movie is an educational essay on small people trying to do great things, and its characters sometimes say the wackiest things, whether it is an extra filming outside during the winter (“Can you please put my soda on the tart so that it’s not frozen when we’re done? Cause I would like to drink it, please”), through uncle Bill reciting a poem (“...I’ll visit your grave everyday... Not every day. I’ll visit it sometime if I ever find it”, upon which Mark chuckles), Mark giving Bill instructions while trying to record the latter’s voice (“You got to watch your teeth, too, because they clack a little bit when they loosen up in the mouth”), up to the bizarre excuse in which some guy took their flyers when he picked up old newspapers and replaced them, upon Mark and Mike have this exchange: “But dude, that doesn’t make any sense!” - “It made sense to him.” Through these people, the story ends up both wise and somber, depicting real, bitter life outside the Hollywood dream, yet it is at the same time uplifting and witty. In the Sisyphus myth, the said man is doomed to constantly try to roll a giant boulder over a hill, but it always rolls back down, to represent how futile people are when trapped by forces of destiny. If Mark Borchardt were Sisyphus, he would have carved up a smaller rock from the big boulder, and then managed to at least roll this smaller piece across the hill.
Grade:+++
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