(Billy is our newest contributor here at Cinema Recon. We are very excited to have his insight and perspective added to the site, so please help us welcome him to the CR family!)
The state of the financial system is precarious…
wars are being fought on all fronts…
People are confused and becoming more and more disenfranchised. Not a day goes by that groups of people, without so much as a clear message, are occupying somewhere.
In a world that seems to be spinning slightly off its axis, The film Bellflower tries and for the most part succeeds at creating a response by a disaffected youth culture to questions they are in no way prepared to answer. Over stimulated by the media and living lives that come too easily for them, the film follows two friends as they prepare for a world resembling the one that inhabits the film “Mad Max,” a world in which in which they are positive is inching ever closer.
Sun drenched and slightly out of focus, the film is unquestionably beautiful with a style that reminds one of the stylus of a turntable skipping and sliding over a record. However, in the film’s second half, its thesis ceases to drive the film and it devolves into a hyper kinetic hallucination that never quite gels.
Like Nicholas Winding Refn’s “Drive,” Bellflower is a little too aware of how cool it is. But the enthusiasm with which the film is made more than makes up for its self-consciousness. “Bellflower” is an extreme motion picture and doesn’t carry the burden of reality, but in the end is worth watching because of its technical proficiency and the all-in menatality of the filmmakers.
Bellflower exists in a world of its own, but given the trajectory of current events, it doesn’t seem that far away.
Cinema Recon 
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