The Brown Bunny: Superbit DVD Review

Buy This DVD Now By Clicking On The Icon Below!

Title: The Brown Bunny: Superbit

Region: One

Genre: Drama

Stars: Vincent Gallo, Chloe Sevigny, and Cheryl Tiegs

Writer: Vincent Gallo

Director: Vincent Gallo

Feature length: 93 minutes

Extras: Trailers

Languages: English DTS Digital 5.0 Theatrical Surround Sound and Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound

Subtitles: English Closed Captions and English and French Language Subtitles

Packaging: Amaray Keep Case

Chapter Stops: 28

Sound: DTS Digital 5.0 Theatrical Surround Sound and Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound

Year of Theatrical Release: 2004/DVD Release: 2005

Home Video Distributor: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

MPAA Rating: Unrated

Reviewer: Mark A. Rivera

I remember hearing about Vincent Gallo’s “The Brown Bunny” when he was a guest on “The Howard Stern Show” sometime last year. Howard seemed to like the fact that Gallo was unafraid to speak his mind on virtually any subject. Of course one of topics of discussion to have come up (no pun intended) is the scene where Actress Chloe Sevigny performs fellatio upon Gallo in the film’s final act. I might be wrong but I think they were romantically involved, but regardless in the context of the film itself I personally did not find the scene to be vulgar in any way.

It is difficult to go into too much detail without giving away a major spoiler, but the way I interpreted the story was of a man who is trying to distance himself on some level from some past heartbreak and trauma, but emotionally he is frozen in time and thus unable to create and sustain any sort of new long term relationship with the opposite sex. This is seen particularly in the names of every woman he encounters on his road trip to Los Angeles. The first woman is a wholesome gas station attendant named Violet. Gallo’s character is a professional motorcycle racer who goes by the name of Bud Clay. His ex-girlfriend’s name was Daisy and Chloe Sevigny plays her. Bud Clay asks and somehow convinces Violet to accompany him on his trip, but he leaves her at her house so she could get her things and then he just drives on without her. A barely recognizable Cheryl Tiegs plays the next person he encounters along the way. This woman is named Lilly and she seems just as unable to connect with another person as Bud is. They share a brief hug and Bud drives on. Then Bud encounters a prostitute while driving through Vegas. Her name is Rose. While clearly driving in such a manner as to look as if he is soliciting for companionship, he turns down two platinum blond women and then after some hesitance, takes in Rose, who is a brunette. Daisy is a brunette that died her hair blond or at least that is how it appears in the film. This is the second brunette Bud encounters in the film and the only two women we see actually enter his van with him are Rose and Violet. There is a reason why no blonds ever go aboard, but you’ll have to watch the whole film to figure that out. Bud does not have sex with Rose. He hardly even talks to her. It appears as though they may have gone through the drive-thru of a McDonalds and then like the previous women Bud encounters on his cross-country trek, He just abandons her on the streets where he found her. All of the women are named after flowers, but none can replace the one that wilted in his heart.

In between every sequence we have scenes of Bud driving in isolation. Whenever he is framed on camera it is always off kilter as if Gallo is trying to show us that his character is so inwardly obsessed that we as an audience can’t possibly hope to connect with him until he finally bares his soul in the film’s final act. Bud Clay is sort of like a Travis Bickle type character, but instead of building to an explosion, Clay’s inability to connect with the world around him leads to his implosion at the end of the film. Perhaps the most dangerous act Clay is capable of is his chosen profession as a professional motorcycle racer, but even here the handheld camera follows Bud and barely keeps up with him because Bud is running from his broken heart and ultimately his guilt. The brown bunny as it were is alluded to in two conversational scenes that actually make more sense once one has had a chance to view the entire film and digest it for a while. I wish I could go into what the brown bunny represents, but to do so would again lead to the revelation of a major spoiler. Color is used sparingly in the film. Bud drives a brown van. His bike looks brown at times in the film. Every woman he encounters in the film is usually wearing a brown article of clothing and Bud is dressed in a Brown shirt and jeans at the time of his confrontation with Daisy.

Gallo seems to be very conscious about how he layers the film’s visuals with an artistic flair. Without naming anyone in particular I want to state that I disagree with some critics who called this one of the worst films of last year. “The Brown Bunny” builds up slowly and at times might seem as though it is pretentious or even amateurish, but it is actually a very well thought out and deliberate study of one man’s mind and Gallo’s direction is strong enough to distance us as an audience to feel just as disconnected from him as his character is disconnected from himself and his environment. It is slow moving, but quite methodic and worth viewing as a whole and in hindsight even the explicit scene between Gallo and Sevigny’s is quite important not because of the action being shown on the screen, but how his character reacts to it during and afterwards. While Gallo is forthcoming during an interview, he does not strike me as the kind of person who is going to explain frame for frame what his cinematic intentions were. That is for each of us to interpret alone and only he knows, if anyone, if what one gets out of the film is actually what he wanted to get across or not. All I can say is “The Brown Bunny” seems as though it is a film that was widely misunderstood in it’s theatrical run and I am glad Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has released on DVD as a part of their Superbit collection of films.

Presented in an anamorphic widescreen (1.66:1) aspect ratio, “The Brown Bunny” is purposely grainy though some sequences like at the salt flats are beautiful to behold. The film’s use of sound is very sparing. At times one might think this were a silent film because there is not a lot of spoken dialogue and in between some mood music and such even the dialogue seems lower than normal. I think this is also purposeful on behalf of Gallo since it both draws the audience closer to his character, but keeps us disconnected from him and like Bud Clay, disconnected from the world around him. English DTS Digital and Dolby Digital 5.0 Surround Soundtracks are included along with English Closed Captions for the hearing impaired and English and French Language Subtitles as options. A short theatrical trailer (: 55) as well as a trailer made for the home video release (1:58) is also present. Personally I liked the shorter trailer more than the home video trailer because it somehow says more by showing less and definitely garners one curiosity about what they may see if they screen “The Brown Bunny.”

The menus are all standard interactive still frames that are easy to navigate. “The Brown Bunny: Superbit” may not be a film for everyone, but few movies ever are. Look for it on DVD-Video at retailers on and offline on Tuesday, August 16, 2005 courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

Return To The Previous Page

Buy This DVD Now By Clicking On The Icon Below!