Craig Denney, the proto-Neil Breen, reimagines Citizen Kane as a violent ruby smuggling adventure story that eventually evolves into a meta tragedy about the dangers of diversifying your astrology/filmmaking empire, with help from Procol Harum and King Lear.
The story starts off almost unbearably straightforward with excessive voice-over narration telling rather than showing, but in scene after scene the script (apparently written by Denney's mother) and the editing (apparently guided by astrological principles) compete to make as many odd decisions and take as many tonal shifts as possible until we've found ourselves in an impossibly different film less than 80 minutes later.
An almost anti-cohesive work, The Astrologer bounces from relentlessly paced sailing montages set to The Moody Blues, Mulholland Drive/Inland Empire era Lynchian scenes of tender romantic scenes superimposed over suburban roads illuminated by headlights set to Tommy Edwards' gentle crooning*, an increasingly slowmo-ed dialogueless argument that feels like a Hollis Frampton formal exercise, and even a brief detour into a sort-of werewolf film(!?)
This is a thrillingly weird cult film, and honestly for all the unintentional humor and amateur performances here, it's not even poorly made, just wildly idiosyncratic.
*Done while Lynch was still working on Eraserhead, years before he mastered his Americana nightmare amalgamations of doowop and terror
Craig Denney, the proto-Neil Breen, reimagines Citizen Kane as a violent ruby smuggling adventure story that eventually evolves into a meta tragedy about the dangers of diversifying your astrology/filmmaking empire, with help from Procol Harum and King Lear.
The story starts off almost unbearably straightforward with excessive voice-over narration telling rather than showing, but in scene after scene the script (apparently written by Denney's mother) and the editing (apparently guided by astrological principles) compete to make as many odd decisions and take as many tonal shifts as possible until we've found ourselves in an impossibly different film less than 80 minutes later.
An almost anti-cohesive work, The Astrologer bounces from relentlessly paced sailing montages set to The Moody Blues, Mulholland Drive/Inland Empire era Lynchian scenes of tender romantic scenes superimposed over suburban roads illuminated by headlights set to Tommy Edwards' gentle crooning*, an increasingly slowmo-ed dialogueless argument that feels like a Hollis Frampton formal exercise, and even a brief detour into a sort-of werewolf film(!?)
This is a thrillingly weird cult film, and honestly for all the unintentional humor and amateur performances here, it's not even poorly made, just wildly idiosyncratic.
*Done while Lynch was still working on Eraserhead, years before he mastered his Americana nightmare amalgamations of doowop and terror
