Movie of the Week: American Fable

Alexa: merican Fable” simultaneously fascinated and frustrated me. First, the positives. This movie is gorgeously shot. It’s the debut film from writer-director Anne Hamilton, and particularly for her first feature-length piece, she has an incredible sense of place. She creates a distinct gothic atmosphere that’s also uniquely American, and it immediately pulls you into this contained world she’s created. The two lead performances are also exceptional. Peyton Kennedy, who plays 11-year-old Gitty, is a little powerhouse. The movie rests on her shoulders and she carries it impeccably. And Richard Schiff (aka Toby from “The West Wing”) is outstanding as always. The scenes between the two of them are by far the most compelling, and they act circles around everyone else in the cast. Unfortunately, the story is a bit of a mess. I get the core premise that this is a lion-and-mouse story for corporate and rural America, and the ambiguity of Jonathan’s return at the end doesn’t bother me. It’s up to us to decide whether he’ll go back to his lion ways or if his experience with Gitty changed him. It’s the many, many other plot threads left hanging that irk me. Will Martin face consequences for straight-up murdering Ethel? For that matter, is he still stuck at the bottom of the well? Is there any sort of fallout for this family at all for being Vera’s accomplices? Also what the heck happened to Vera anyway, and why did she want to kidnap Jonathan in the first place? I was also expecting more of a fantasy element, given the word “fable” is in the title. The movie scratches the surface of fantasy in a disjointed dream sequence that feels out of place given the rest of the movie’s stark realism. Leaning into the genre could have been a more effective storytelling technique. Those story weaknesses hinder what could have been a remarkable debut for Hamilton, but she shows huge potential as a filmmaker and I can’t wait to see what she does next.

Joel: This movie feels like the first draft of part of a complete idea. The concept of a kidnap victim befriending the daughter of his kidnapper is an interesting one. But beyond that general idea, the movie doesn’t ever seem to have anything worked out. In an effort to not make the father character a truly terrible person, the act of kidnapping is moved to a third party, a mysterious woman that wants the kidnapping to happen for seriously underdeveloped, vague “protecting the farmers” reasons. This character doesn’t ever really add anything more than confusion to the movie. Then you have the character of Martin who is supposed to be the main external threat to Gitty, but Martin’s character again, ends up muddying up the movie more than anything else. He has this philosophy of “There are two kinds of people. Warriors and…”(I don’t know the other one. Farmer’s maybe? He never really says exactly, just says that farmers make bad warriors).

So much of this script feels like it was rushed and never given the time to be fleshed out. You get this faun that was taken in, but disappeared without a lesson to be learned or a reason to be in the movie at all. Was that the faun’s skull on Gitty’s pillow? Where then, did the antlers come from? If not, where did that skull come from. When Gitty says that there’s a man that lives in the Silo in front of the whole family, why didn’t they address this claim with her once Ethel was gone? Why, also were they surprised later in the movie to find out she was talking to the man in the Silo? She literally told them that she knew about him a few scenes earlier. That stuff down the well, the violin and the note from the 1930s, what was that supposed to be about? Who were those two kids in the well scene that disappeared from the movie, never to be seen again? Is Martin dead? Are we going to address the dead lady with a gunshot wound on their property? If Martin is not dead and Gitty says “he tried to shoot and kill me” how is the family going to address that? What time frame does this movie even take place in? There are twenty tally marks on the inside of the silo, but it’s implied that nobody is feeding Jonathan while he’s trapped in there. If Gitty is feeding this man for close to a month, does nobody notice the food going missing? Or the fact that their prisoner isn’t getting weaker from hunger. And books, and musical instruments keep appearing in his prison. We know that Martin keeps going out to visit him.

American Fable also appears to be trying to draw some inspiration from Guillermo Del Toro, particularly Pan’s Labyrinth. You have the title referring to the story as a Fable, and you have a few fantastical elements sprinkled in here and there, but these just add to the problems of the movie as a whole. First of all the fantastical elements of the movie are mostly regulated to a confusing dream sequence, and revolve around the mysterious woman who orchestrated all of this but the the fantasy elements are not frequent enough to feel like a genuine part of the movie, but instead feel like an awkward addition, or a metaphor that doesn’t make sense and never goes anywhere.

The few scenes that are between Peyton Kennedy and Richard Schiff are the only real highlight of this movie. Again these scenes go back to the original core idea that’s the interesting part of the premise, a kidnap victim befriends the daughter of his kidnapper. The dynamic between these two characters is interesting and it’s really the only time that the movie works. Everything else is too muddy, or two confusing, or requires too much suspension of disbelief to really come together as a coherent story.

Chris: Never have I watched a movie that was so painfully vague. There’s so many pronouns in this script that I’m surprised that when the mother had the baby, the child wasn’t named “Her” or “that kid.” And the times when there isn’t a flood of pronouns, we are met with repetitive riddles that I guess are suppose to have some bigger meaning within the story. However, the story and the dialogue is so annoyingly vague that the audience never gets what the bigger meaning is suppose to be. American Fable tries so hard to be high minded but the movie ultimately gets about a foot off the ground. And there’s plenty of pacing issues. The biggest one I can think of was when Gitty first went to the silo and saw that Jonathan had his finger cut off, there was such a panic and Gitty ran off, presumably to get help to do something but instead, she’s having awkward supper time with the family. So I guess Gitty wasn’t too concerned about her friend. And Ethel, you’re telling me that a former cop is going to run across an open plain, away from cover while there’s an active shooter? There’s all this symbolism with Gitty and I get what they were going for, it was supposed to symbolize growth and not being defenseless but aside from her getting her hands bloody at the very end, there’s zero growth. There’s zero progress made with Gitty, she still has the same clueless, dim-witted look on her face as she did in the beginning. And speaking of that ending, were we suppose feel like that was a cliff-hanger? Because the guy just revisted where he was being held and said hello to Gitty. I don’t know what else I’m supposed to get out of it which is how I felt about the movie in general. I felt like American Fable consisted of maybe 10 pages of actual script and handed it to a production studio with the promise that they’ll make it look so pretty that the audience will overlook out lazily written it is. I love Richard Schiff and American Fable made me hate a movie he’s in. That’s quite an accomplishment.

Jason: I can honestly say that I was quite disappointed by this one. The synopsis and trailer on Netflix made this sound like an intriguing and mystical tale but what we got was an enigmatic and mostly pointless anecdote. Everyone else has already pointed out the lack of fantastical elements so I won’t echo it too much but one thing that really stuck out to  me is that horse rider was not just a part of Gitty’s dream. She saw the figure several times in different contexts. I’m not sure if we were supposed to assume that it was real or if she was just imagining it. If it was in her imagination, was it a representation of something in her world? Was she precognitive in a way and the rider was an omen of horrible things to come? There just wasn’t enough in the story itself to grab onto.

If they had either gone farther into the fantasy or cut it out completely, it would have been a much different, and perhaps better movie. On a different note, the dream sequence was shot at a place called House on the Rock that is a super awesome museum that I have actually been to. I suggest giving it a visit if you’re ever up that way.