REVIEW - PRINCE AVALANCHE

Prince Avalanche sees David Gordon Green abandon much of his idiosyncrasy, but edge only a little closer to reality. Truth is, I don't think I'd want a David Gordon Green film that mainlined its messages and their meanings. His jaunty abstraction has returned, and is most welcome, even in this more marketable guise. Savvy of him to riff on Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurdsson's Either Way, planting his protagonists in the Texan wilderness, ambling along an empty road, painting lines and erecting posts. Only more wilderness on each side of the road, at least as far in as they ever traverse, and only more road ahead and behind. The city is a mythical metropolis, a man's wife a mere memory. They meet another man, driving a truck, bearing alcohol - he is steadily soused, it seems, and makes only intermittent sense. There's a woman too, rummaging through the remains of her home, burnt down by wildfire, pursuing a piece of paper. It's probably not there. Is she even there? Are these woods even there? Drunk, dreaming or distracted, Alvin and Lance listen to the silence, performing a perfunctory job that has no immediate practical purpose. Alvin is more comfortable acting out his perception of normality in the mutilated carcass of a house than seizing even the slightest opportunity to experience it for real. Lance's thoughts of what must come to pass in the city influence what actually does come to pass, and his thoughts on what did come to pass influence his outlook on life. Both are living one life inside their heads, and another in reality. Are they wounding their respective realities by neglecting them so? Or are they escaping them, both literally and figuratively? Green has never before immersed his characters so absolutely in such a distant remove from real life, and it befits his style as neatly as you'd expect. Pretension is mostly kept at bay, which is a positive thing, but Paul Rudd is a capable enough actor to thrive at a greater length from his trademark comic crutches than he does here, and Green is a capable enough director to resist following him down there to nudge at that flimsy line between just far enough and too far altogether.