Don't Come Knocking

I've been to the cinema a few times as of late but have neglected to write anything about my experiences there. And so I shall now remedy the situation.

The most recent film I saw was Don't Come Knocking which has now left Madison. The film is by German director Wim Wenders with a screenplay by Sam Shepard who also stars. It concerns an aging actor, Howard Spence (played by Shepard), who goes missing from the set of his latest Western still donning his cowboy costume. The Hollywood backers of the film send Sutter, played by Tim Roth, after him.

Perhaps in a weird oedipal way, the first person that Howard seeks out is his mother. There is a scene where Howard is driving down a highway at night speaking to her on a cell phone. We find out that he hasn't seen her in decades – since he became a movie star. Howard indicates that he wants to visit her and the phone's reception begins to fade and the connection becomes riddled with static. But I swear her voice was clear enough and I heard her saying that she didn't want to see him ever again. This is the first bit that relates to the film's title. Driving to the nearest bus stop, Howard buys a ticket and proceeds to destroy his credit cards and cell phone before boarding a bus.

His mother lives in Nevada and, when he steps off the bus, she is welcoming but not especially warm. She has many questions and is a bit hesitant in seeing her son but, being a mother, she can't say no. During these scenes we learn that Howard's career has been a mess of drugs and women and we also learn that a woman contacted his mother claiming to be the mother of his child. This prompts Howard to go want to go to Montana, where the woman was from and where he had shot a film earlier in his career. There's a scene where Howard and his mother are in a diner and a fellow patron keeps staring at Howard which angers him and he yells at the guy. Later on, Howard goes to a casino and encounters the guy there. We find out that they had starred in a film together decades ago. Despite this common ground, Howard shoves the guy and tells him to stay away. The drink gets the better of him and Howard is brought back to his mother's home by the police. Eventually Howard's mother gives him his father's old car and he sets off for Montana.

In Butte, Howard finds the woman with whom he had a tryst, Doreen, as well as his son, Earl, who appears to be in his mid-20s and the singer of the band playing in the bar where he meets Doreen. She is not especially pleased to see Howard but she does seem keen on him meeting Earl and resolving the questions/issues between them. All the while a blond woman in her early-20s follows Howard around while carrying an urn containing the ashes of her mother.

Howard spends a lot of time looking at the ground. Whenever he is asked why he has suddenly reappeared in the lives of these various people, he doesn't have a particularly good answer. When he is getting chewed out, he just looks down at the ground. He's spent most of his life telling others to not come knocking and he now finds himself being told the same thing. Earl can only feel anger towards Howard and it turns out to be more than justified. Towards the end, Howard confronts Doreen who chastises him for giving up on Earl after only a couple days. Howard then reveals that he's thought about the situation and realizes that he didn't come to Montana for him but for her. This gets him in deep doo-doo as she unleashes a torrent against him. In another scene, we find out that the blonde woman, whose name is Sky, is Howard's daughter and it is only her knock that Howard answers to. At the end of the film, Sutter finds Howard and drags him away to return him to the set in Utah.

Howard isn't a sympathetic protagonist by any means. But if, like me, you see something of your own father in his cold distance and his inability to really be open with people in his life, then he at least is familiar and, perhaps, understandable. The film has several layers which represent many dichotomies and conflicts, old and new. One of the newer ones is life vs. how Hollywood presents it. Howard has spent his career playing the heroes of Westerns who are typically loners yet he has a moment of revelation – he doesn't really want to be alone. There are also what literary critic George Steiner called the "constants of conflict in the condition of man". Steiner was referring to Antigone and Greek tragedy but they apply here as well: man vs. woman, old vs. young, and society vs. individual. Perhaps as a sub-conflict would be parent vs. child. These conflicts permeate the film. Howard vs. his mother; Howard vs. Doreen; Earl vs. Howard; Sky vs. Howard; Earl vs. his girlfriend; Howard vs. the Hollywood moguls; Howard vs. the societal expectation of settling down to be a husband & father. Howard loses the ultimate battle – he returns to his life as an actor and of being alone. He doesn't connect with his son and thusly doesn't really become a father. He doesn't establish a relationship with his mother nor does he find permanent female companionship. While Howard departs from Sky with a hug, they're bond was quite ephemeral.

At its core, Don't Come Knocking is about loneliness – the soul-wrenching kind. Howard felt it and tried to act upon these feelings to remedy them but, in the end, he proved impotent to change them. The film didn't come across as a heavy-handed morality play but more of an existential glimpse. I think my ambivalence here is a tribute to the film's strength. It's easy to say that the message of the film is an admonition against closing oneself off and becoming an island but that would be over-simplifying things. Why did Howard decide that he wanted Doreen back instead of fighting for some kind of détente with his son? Was he giving up too easily or was he being honest? Maybe he really didn't care about his son.

Personally, I found the film very lively, in its own way. I had stuffed myself at the Chinese buffet next door just prior to heading to the theater yet felt no post-prandial lethargy despite the film's style which was very slow and deliberate. I appreciated its open-endedness. Plus the cinematography was great with the wide-open vistas of the American West and the great use of widescreen with the composition of several shots featuring people at opposite ends of the screen. As I said above, the film has now left Madison so methinks that, if you missed it, you'll have to rent the DVD. I'm quite thankful that the folks at Hilldale Theaters brought it to town. For a while there, I thought that it wouldn't make it to town.