Why I love The Canyons

“It’s a cold, dead film about cold, dead peo­ple” is how Bret Eas­t­on Ellis described The Canyons at a press con­fer­ence dur­ing the 70^th Venice Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val. Ear­li­er that year, it had been reject­ed by Sun­dance, though the sec­ond of the two fes­ti­vals to reject the film – South by South­west – was per­haps more elab­o­rate in their rejec­tion of the film, claim­ing it suf­fered from ​“qual­i­ty issues” and that it had ​“an ugli­ness and dead­ness to it”. This was mere­ly part of an end­less tor­rent of media detri­tus that plagued the film before it even received a the­atri­cal release.

After all, why wouldn’t it be provoca­tive? Schrader’s first film since Adam Res­ur­rect­ed, The Canyons placed a sem­i­nal Amer­i­can direc­tor-screen­writer in the posi­tion of hav­ing to fund his eigh­teenth fea­ture via Kick­starter. Paired with Ellis as screen­writer, the gueril­la approach to cast­ing led to Hollywood’s pre­scribed enfant ter­ri­ble Lind­say Lohan and adult film star James Deen, along with a cast of rel­a­tive ama­teurs and Gus Van Sant, being cast as the leads in a film writ­ten and direct­ed by two of America’s fore­most poets of urban ennui and vio­lent machismo.

Its rep­u­ta­tion pre­cedes it, and yet if one peers beyond the veneer of dis­re­pute that ren­dered The Canyons a dis­as­ter in just about every respect, what reveals itself is a late-peri­od work so cal­cu­lat­ed­ly icy in its exte­ri­ors and repug­nant in its pro­ceed­ings that it seemed des­tined for fail­ure. As with much of Ellis’ work, The Canyons fol­lows, through even their most mun­dane stretch­es, the lives of obscene­ly wealthy socialites, whose solip­sism clouds their judge­ment until there’s noth­ing left to hold onto. To a film­mak­er whose char­ac­ters are as pierc­ing­ly solip­sis­tic as Schrad­er, Ellis’ menagerie of the mon­eyed might seem a per­fect fit.

In prac­tice, the uni­fi­ca­tion of Schrad­er and Ellis results in an eerie dis­con­nect that lends The Canyons’ images a degree of uncan­ni­ness. The rig­or­ous moral par­a­digms and code of ethics that encase the arche­typ­al Schrader­ian pro­tag­o­nist are super­seded here by their con­spic­u­ous absence, instead giv­ing way to a can­ni­bal­iza­tion of excess.

The two list­less fig­ures around whom the loose sem­blance of a plot revolves, Tara (Lohan) and Chris­t­ian (Deen), are less human beings than they are hol­low ves­sels for the super­im­po­si­tion of genre upon a palette of vacu­ity. They drift across non-places that seem to exist only for a mat­ter of moments, illu­mi­nat­ed by blind­ing­ly bright bloom light­ing, until these spaces recede into anonymi­ty. For a film so osten­si­bly root­ed in the ruth­less­ness of the indus­try that defines LA, it seems remark­ably dis­mis­sive towards any attempt to ground itself in its sur­round­ings, instead choos­ing to man­i­fest in the form of ren­der­ing every space one of performativity.

Take the film’s open­ing, where Tara and Chris­t­ian resign them­selves to the act of hav­ing to relin­quish part of their plen­ti­ful time to din­ing with a rook­ie actor, Ryan, and his part­ner Gina. Shot-reverse shot, the 360 degree rule, even the mere con­cept of facial expres­sions as reac­tions – all of these con­ven­tions are shat­tered in The Canyons’ open­ing min­utes, as dia­tribes and mantras are exchanged with no end in sight except for the rest­less­ness of its vam­pir­ic protagonists.

Tra­vers­ing through the con­crete deserts of strip malls and fea­ture­less man­sions is Lohan’s Tara, who strikes a sharp con­trast to the Schrader­ian pro­tag­o­nist not only because of an absence of the dis­tinct­ly mas­cu­line reser­va­tion char­ac­ter­iz­ing this arche­type, but because she is as much a sub­ject of the com­mer­cial panop­ti­con as she is an enforcer of it. Much of what binds Tara and Christian’s pas­sion­less rela­tion­ship togeth­er is the orches­tra­tion of per­for­mances that they engage in near­ly every night, where­by they invite cou­ples (and, as in the film, lone­ly young men) over to their man­sion- often for the sole pur­pose of trans­form­ing them­selves into voyeuris­tic spec­ta­cle, not unlike Amer­i­can Gigolo’s tit­u­lar escort Julian.

What dif­fer­en­ti­ates Tara and Chris­t­ian from Gere’s ren­di­tion of a God’s Lone­ly Man is the appar­ent absence of any inte­ri­or­i­ty, not just in them­selves but in their sur­round­ings. Silent­ly shuf­fling through Fou­cal­dian pris­ons, com­posed of stark white walls and fur­nish­ings that wouldn’t look out of place in the Tate Mod­ern, Tara can­not afford the lux­u­ry of the code of ethics that allows the Schrader­ian pro­tag­o­nist to live a life of asceti­cism, nor does she have any­where to retreat to.

She is onto­log­i­cal­ly unmoored, with Schrader’s lens con­stant­ly attempt­ing to sequester her with­in spaces where, if only for a moment, she can escape the sen­sa­tion of glares pierc­ing her skin – that of sus­pi­cion from Chris­t­ian, and of envy from blind­ed by the glint of a pearl neck­lace. Only when she devi­ates from the script imposed upon her, then, is she able to slip out of the shack­les of performance.

Fun­da­men­tal­ly alter­ing the posi­tions of pow­er that The Canyons’ occu­pants exist with­in is a tryst between Tara, Chris­t­ian and an unnamed cou­ple. Basked under a whirl­wind of flu­o­res­cent strobes, the flick­er­ing of green and red across the list­less faces of this ritual’s par­tic­i­pants (a motif Schrad­er used to sim­i­lar effect in The Card Counter and Mas­ter Gar­den­er) sig­nal the shift of the objec­ti­fied to the orches­tra­tor, as Tara employs the instru­ment of seduc­tion that ren­ders her an object to place Chris­t­ian, for once in his life, in a posi­tion of pow­er­less­ness. In a coun­sel­ing ses­sion with an equal­ly dis­af­fect­ed ther­a­pist, played by Gus Van Sant, Chris­t­ian con­fess­es to feel­ing emas­cu­lat­ed: ​“It made me feel like an actor.”

Once the film’s the­sis on the uni­ver­sal­i­ty of per­for­mance is ver­bal­ized as an admis­sion of the col­lapse of gen­dered ego, then, there seems to be no direc­tion to go except a frame­work of well-worn images: the woman lib­er­at­ed, an unsolved mur­der and an all-too famil­iar stranger on the oth­er side a phone. No mat­ter how much one tries to direct their own nar­ra­tives in the epoch of the image, The Canyons asserts, there’s always some­one else pulling the strings, mak­ing it impos­si­ble to extri­cate one­self from the ero­sion of self enabled by late capitalism.