Wristcutters: A Love Story

Watching “Wriscutters: A Love Story“, I got wondering about what had happened to the ‘Livejournal movie.’ Around 2003-2005, every week there seemed to be some new quirky, independent movie that everyone was talking about on Livejournal. It became a rite of passage, a club you couldn’t join until you made a post about how you’d seen this movie. “You haven’t seen ‘Me, You and Everyone We Know’? Pfft. You’re banned from my journal until you do.” I used to whine about this so much back then. About how this was actually ruining my enjoyment of movies - I’d look around a cinema and try to predict what movies would become ‘Livejournal movies’ - but as well, it seemed like the studios copped to this and started deliberately making films for this demographic and hoping they’d cross over. They became so formulaic, you could play indie-film bingo. Zinging pop-culture script? Check! Big-name star proving his/her ‘cred’? Check! Electronic/Folk-rock soundtrack? Check! John Hawkes? Check! I guess the problem is that these movies have started crossing over into the mainstream. Last year, Little Miss Sunshine got a “Best Movie” nomination at the oscars. This year it was Juno. And shit, we all saw what happened when Donnie Darko became a hit with the xtravision crowd. Suddenly it was all played out and it got dropped quicker than a hot poo.

Anyway, Wristcutters (which ticks at least three of the criteria I mentioned) was pretty good. It’s central concept is so beautifully simple, it makes you wonder why it hasn’t been done before: people who commit suicide end up in limbo, which is just like this world except you can’t smile and they play Joy Division all the time. It’s got some nice, tender performances - like Shea Whigham’s Eugene, a Russian asshole with a heart of gold. And some very nice cameos, from the likes of Will Arnett (basically playing Gob, again) and Tom Waits (basically playing… well, Tom Waits, but that’s no bad thing.) But what impressed me most was how they managed to make such a sweet movie from such a depressing subject. A livejournal movie done right.