I am a fan of Bryan Fuller. I’ve seen a number of episodes of “Pushing Daises” (I’ve been meaning to watch the entire show top to bottom t2b but haven’t done it yet because there are always 84732924739 new shows coming out), and I’ve seen the first two seasons of “Hannibal”, which is the darkest, edgiest show I’ve ever seen on network television, and that includes “Profit”! So I was pretty stoked to watch Bryan Fuller’s first feature film.
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Plot synopsis from professor Kov: “Guillermo del Toro makes ‘Leon’”. It’s pretty apt, which is why I stole it from him. The check’s in the mail, professor Kov!
But what’s interesting isn’t the plot, it’s the *style*. Actually, the plot is pretty interesting, but the style is even more so. I recall many years back listening to Byran Fuller being interviewed on the “History of Horror” podcast, and he mentioned that when he watches the movie “Alien”, and the alien shows up on screen, all he sees is a vulva.
How does that make any sense? Well, here are two possible explanations.
1) Bryan Fuller is cray cray.
2) Bryan Fuller sees things through the eyes of a child.
You might note that the two things aren’t mutually exclusive, and you might think that the second thing is handing Bryan Fuller a burn notice. But it’s not. It’s actually a compliment!
Here’s the thing about children: They think slow. I don’t mean that they’re idiots (although they are), but I am referring specifically to the “fast thinking” versus “slow thinking” presented by folks like Daniel Kahneman. The check’s in the mail, Daniel!
What is boils down to is this: “Fast thinking” is stuff your brain automatically processes. You don’t have to think about them. For instance, looking at a chair. You don’t need to actively think “that’s a chair”, your wealth of experience and so forth lets you automatically classify it as ‘chair’ without any active thought. Then there’s slow thinking. That’s actually actively thinking about stuff. It’s looking at, say, Ryan Reynolds, and being like “that six pack of abs probably takes hours per week in the gym”. Or when somebody tells you “5 + 5”. You know what “5” is, that’s fast, but you need to take however long it takes to sum them up and get to “10”. That’s slow.
Children don’t know anything. Their fast thinking database is mostly empty, so they have to do a lot more slow thinking. So, we might see an alien and simply know it’s a “xenomorph” without thinking about it, but if a child sees an alien, they have to actively classify it, as a vulva, or a pony, or whatever the @#$! children see when they look at stuff.
“Dust Bunny” presents a world seen through the eyes of an 8 year old. Coming from the vulva xenomorph guy, that isn’t a surprise. What *is* surprising, is just how cool that world actually is. Instead of grainy textures we get vivid colors. Our 8 year old heroine, aurora (sleeping beauty? She does spend a lot of time in her bed, hiding from the monster that lives under it) is kind of obsessed with darkness, shadows, and light, so we get shadows everywhere, and when she finds lights to light up our world brightens as hers does.
This all leads to a... Surreal viewing experience. Everything is just... Off. What this does, is help turn off that “fast thinking” mode of your brain. Because you’re never really sure what you’re looking at, much like a child, you kind of have to classify it. Is that a monster under the bed, or are we manifesting a metaphor for childhood trauma? Is it really this dark, or do we just *feel* like it is? Is that mega hot supermodel assassin real, or is she kind of fear of the feminine mystique made manifest in some way (why are female assassins in movies so hot? Are real female assassins that hot? Somebody with ties to the assassin’s guild needs to let me know!)? What matters isn’t where you eventually land on these issues, what matters is that you have to *think about them* either way.
That process, of actively having to kind of decode the movie because it doesn’t quite conform to reality, is frequently known as “arthouse”, and it’s pretty easy to just be confused and dismiss the movie altogether, and go look for a something a little more explodey. Well... You can’t really dismiss “Dust Bunny”, because, despite being arthouse, it’s ALSO explodey! There are monsters, hot assassins, gunfights, martial arts fights, and Mads Mikkelson, one of the coolest damn actors on earth (much the same way Jean Reno was one of the coolest actors on earth back when he was ‘Leon’). You get all that explodey goodness while being forced to kind of decode an arthouse movie at the same time. It’s like sneaking broccoli into a twinkie. Well, except broccoli is delicious, so that wasn’t the best metaphor... But you know what I mean! Also, do they still even have twinkies? I haven’t seen a twinkie in over 30 years. They were friggin’ tasty.
Would I want all my action movies shrouded in arthouse shadows? Nope. But I certainly want it from my Bryan Fuller movies, and I am looking forward to whatever he does next. Although we could probably use a bit more vulva.
5/10