Julian Po
USA 1997
Reviewed by Edward Lawrenson
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
A nameless US town, the present. Bookkeeper Julian Po arrives and takes a room in a boarding house. Keeping to himself, Po arouses the suspicions of the locals. With his every move scrutinised by the townsfolk, Po is finally confronted by a deputation of locals, led by the mayor and the sheriff. Faced with accusations that he's a drug pusher and murderer, Po confesses he's come to the town to kill himself.
The townsfolk's attitude towards Po is now a mixture of curiosity and concern. One inhabitant organises a sweepstake to guess the date of Po's suicide. In between offering advice to a variety of people (the parish priest, a young married couple, the sheriff's wife) Po becomes involved with local girl Sarah, who tells him that she's dreamed about him on countless occasions. Beguiled by the town's gentle pace of life and in love with Sarah, Po's thoughts turn away from suicide. The locals, however, continue to offer him advice on the best way to kill himself. Inspired by Po, Sarah commits suicide by jumping into a nearby river. The mayor and sheriff demand he kill himself as he originally planned. Po's attempts to leave the town are frustrated; he's last seen being led away by the sheriff and the mayor to an unknown fate.
Review
Some time after arriving in the small deadbeat town where he plans to commit suicide, the eponymous Julian Po says he's "pretty used to being anonymous." Despite recording his thoughts on a portable tape recorder (a device which recalls The King of Marvin Gardens, 1972, starring an equally introspective Jack Nicholson, an actor whose mannerisms Christian Slater has done a good job of mimicking from Heathers onwards), this is about as close as we get to a reason why Po should want to die. But it provides an apt comment on the film. With efficient if unremarkable direction by Alan Wade, an unusually restrained, somewhat muffled performance by Slater and a series of undistinguished, characterless locations, an air of workmanlike anonymity hangs over Julian Po. There are even parallels between the way Po seems to arrive in the town as if from nowhere - he hails from the city, and has never before seen the ocean is all the backstory we get - and the cloudy origins of Wade's debut film, which since it was completed in 1997 has languished for three years without a UK release.
It's in the curiously bloodless depiction of smalltown life that Julian Po suffers most. Despite the fact he's long since decided against taking his own life, Po is ultimately driven to suicide by the townsfolk's determination to hold him to his word. It's a downbeat ending and an implicit critique of the conformist pressures bearing down on members of seemingly untroubled, close-knit communities.
But aside from a few quietly menacing moments (a barber imagines what it would be like to slit Po's throat as he sits waiting to be shaved; Po's creepy hotelier asks him: "Are you a nigger?") there's little in Wade's communal portrait to suggest any darker undercurrents. It's almost all affectionate, good-hearted stuff. Numbering among its population well-meaning eccentrics (a young wife gives Po a Bible to study; a garage attendant and part-time De Niro impersonator hatches dreams of going to Hollywood; a priest happily announces his loss of faith to his congregation, all turned out in their Sunday best), the town would seem to be an embodiment of the land of good old-fashioned neighbourliness we all thought had disappeared.
Drifting along agreeably Capraesque lines for the most part, the film's sudden sour ending doesn't quite wash. Observing a change that's come over him, the now serene Po remarks midway into the film: "There's a kindness here." It's a sign of Wade's scrupulous fence-sitting (a white picket fence, perhaps) that the supreme irony of this comment is only revealed retrospectively, but otherwise there's little to dissuade us from taking it at face value.
The unbearably fey romantic subplot involving Po and Sarah doesn't help. Having had a vision of Po well before his arrival, the dreamy and father-figure-fixated Sarah declares her love to Po immediately on meeting him; Po responds with a line which even an unreconstructed sentimentalist like Franco Zeffirelli would balk at using: "You're so beautiful. I could go on living forever for you." Later on, in another cringe-inducing aside, Po urges a few of the locals to chase their dreams because, "Life's too short." Of course, he's right, but 83 minutes of this stodgy, airless film is likely to make what time we have on Earth seem just that little bit longer.
Credits
- Director
- AlanWade
- Producers
- Jon Glascoe
- Joseph Pierson
- Screenplay
- Alan Wade
- Based on the book La mort de Monsieur Golouja by Branimir Scepanovic
- Director of Photography
- Bernd Heinl
- Editor
- Jeffrey Wolf
- Production Designer
- Stephen McCabe
- Music/Music Conductor
- Patrick Williams
- ©New Line Productions Inc
- Production Companies
- Fine Line Features presents a Cypress Films, Inc./Mindel-Shaw production
- Executive Producers
- Allan Mindel
- Denise Shaw
- Michael Traeger
- Co-producer
- Cecilia Kate Roque
- Associate Producers
- Peggy Glascoe
- Patricia Lamagna
- Kim Moarefi
- Executive in Charge of Production
- Carla Fry
- Production Executive
- Robert J. Degus
- Production Controller
- Paul Prokop
- Production Co-ordinators
- Peter Schon
- In-house:
- Emily Glatter
- Los Angeles:
- Mark Winsten
- Unit Production Manager
- Trish Hofmann
- Co-location Managers
- Diana Strauss
- Jonathan Zeidman
- Post-production
- Executive in Charge:
- Sara King
- Supervisor:
- Jack Deutchman
- Co-ordinator:
- Fabian Marquez
- Services:
- Brent Kaviar
- Assistant Directors
- Jim LaClair
- Susan Labunski-Saxe
- Melissa V. Barnes
- Script Supervisor
- Deirdre Horgan
- Casting
- Todd Thaler
- Associate:
- Gayle Keller
- ADR Voice:
- David Kramer's Looping Group
- Camera Operator
- Michael Levine
- Steadicam Operator
- David Knox
- Visual Effects Co-ordinator
- Debra C. Victoroff
- Art Director
- David Stein
- Set Decorator
- Susan Goulder
- Master Scenic Artist
- Annie Besier Haywood
- Storyboard Artist
- John Sicoransa
- Costume Designer
- Juliet Polcsa
- Wardrobe Supervisors
- Elizabeth Feldbauer
- Lizzy Gulczynski
- Key Make-up Artist
- Rosemarie Zurlo
- Key Hair Stylist
- Victor P. Denicola Jr
- Main/End Titles Design
- Tibor Pilenyi
- Titles/Opticals
- Cineric Inc
- Vocals
- Carmen Twillie
- Violin Solos
- Bruce Dukov
- Soprano Saxophone Solos
- Dan Higgins
- Executive in Charge of Music
- Toby Emmerich
- Music Executives
- Dana Sano
- Mark Kaufman
- Music Co-ordinators
- Bob Bowen
- Helle O'Connell
- Music Editors
- Allan K. Rosen
- Patty Von Arx
- Scoring Engineer
- Charles Pollard
- Soundtrack
- "How to Fly" by/performed by Pete Snell
- Sound Mixer
- Scott Breindel
- Re-recording Mixer
- Peter Waggoner
- Sound One Corp.
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Stuart Levy
- Dialogue Editor
- Branka Mrkic
- ADR
- Artists:
- Blanca Camacho
- Earl Hammond
- Matt Hedge
- Pamela Lewis
- Conan McCarty
- Jimmy McQuaid
- Pamela Moller
- Paulette Rubinstein
- Lea Schell
- Cory Scott
- Craig Sechler
- Engineers:
- David Boulton
- David Novack
- Editor:
- Lisa J. Levine
- Foley
- Artist:
- Brian Vancho
- Engineer:
- George Lara
- Editor:
- Steven R. Visscher
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Tom Sierchio
- Cast
- Christian Slater
- Julian Po
- Robin Tunney
- Sarah
- Bruce Bohne
- Pastor Bean
- Roy Cooper
- Tobias
- Frankie Faison
- Leon, the sheriff
- Zeljko Ivanek
- Tom Potter
- Allison Janney
- Lilah Leech
- Cherry Jones
- Lucy, the maid
- Jeremy Jordan
- Bobby
- Ellen McElduff
- Reva
- Michael Parks
- Vern
- Anne Pitoniak
- Mrs Danforth
- Harve Presnell
- Henry, the mayor
- LaTanya Richardson
- Darlene
- Dina Spybey
- Dee
- Io Tillett Wright
- Walter
- Erik Jensen
- Tyler
- Silas Weir Mitchell
- Stonewall
- Constance Barry
- Emma
- Dechen Thurman
- young farmer
- Nena Thurman
- Sarah's mother
- Certificate
- 12
- Distributor
- Entertainment Film Distributors Ltd
- 7,528 feet
- 83 minutes 39 seconds
- Dolby
- Colour by
- Technicolor.
- Prints by
- DeLuxe-Toronto