Documentaries on the more creative end of the spectrum which incorporate fiction elements and use a collaborative approach to give greater agency to their subjects have been gaining greater recognition and higher-profile slots at festivals in recent years. Scientist-turned-filmmaker Rob Rice’s first feature Way Out Ahead Of Us, which had its world premiere at FID Marseille and screens later this week at Filmfest Oldenburg, fits snugly into this hybrid, socially-minded approach, in its portrait of a patch of impoverished white America in the desert of Southeastern California. The director enlisted a real couple, Mark and Tracy Staggs, for the project (Mark is also credited as a co-producer along with Rice, Rui Xu, and Matt Porterfield, who is well-known for his independent features capturing the societal tensions of modern America.) Mark is dealing with a terminal illness, adding to the stresses of their precarious existence — a diagnosis they are keeping a secret from their daughter Cassie (an invented character, played by Nikki DeParis, who never feels very credibly integrated into situations). Cassie is on the cusp of venturing out on her own to make her way in Los Angeles, now that she has reached adulthood.
Rice has bitten off a little more than he can chew with this ambitious debut. The reformulation of the Staggs family dynamic through the intervention of an imagined daughter the couple wished for but never had together lacks a fully cohesive motivation, and the film, in choosing the uncertain future as its theme, favours a hazy lyricism over socio-political specificity and rigour, resulting in the vague, unfinished feel of a sketch, its episodes just glancing over what defines the lives of these individuals. Editing fails to sufficiently join the dots in a film that feels nebulously unguided and scattershot, and uncertain how to read the milieu it is set in. It succeeds to some extent in creating a melancholy moodscape around the notion of hard-to-grasp dreams in a neglected pocket of the United States, but its slightness will hinder its festival traction amid harder-hitting, more politically trenchant fare beyond niche arthouse slots.
In a roadside patch of arid landscape surrounded by abandoned cars and appliances that have given up the ghost, the Staggs, who have the bantering affection of a couple married for 25 years, pass a lot of their time at home as they attempt to come to terms with Mark’s unspecified illness, the mountains of clutter in their small quarters seeming almost like a futile bulwark against oblivion. Small episodes of the day-to-day existence of the couple and their neighbours are infused with empathy and an eye for endearing personality quirks, while never veering far from surface-level treatment of standard tropes representing white lower-class America on the margins. Alongside the labyrinthine inaccessibility of affordable medical care and support, there is a wrestling match as a moment for leisure and father-daughter bonding; the nonchalant presence of shotguns in the home with minimal safety precaution; bong-smoking and vodka-swilling meet-ups of wise-cracking youth to pass the time in a place with little other entertainment; the difficulty of readjustment after jail-time, and religious evangelism as a recourse to meaning.
The couple’s daughter (Nikki DeParis) embodies the dream of escape and improved prospects, as she prepares to leave to L.A. with just a backpack and bus ticket. Though for those around her, who offer their well-meaning advice and warnings to stay straight, the metropolis is not so much a place of unbounded possibility as a danger of temptations, corrupting influences and potential bad decisions. A number of men who have left the town have come back having done prison time, with felonies to their name. Rice avoids bringing the increasingly divided politics of America explicitly into the picture and instead of delving into the historical or structural context for the dead-end mood of the settlement he focuses instead on a kind of magical thinking that permeates the community, at least at night when the subconscious takes over. The frequent framing of characters outside in the evening, in inky silhouette against the wide skies, reinforces this orientation towards half-light lyricism, as do several oblique surrealistic interludes.
A dream is recounted, in which notes written by generations of locals were thrown into a pit mine used as a wishing well, only to be washed out in a storm, as inhabitants gathered to read the writing faded to indecipherability by the floodwaters. It’s a beautiful image of dreams thwarted by catastrophe — but like so much else in the film, it is fleeting and impressionistic, afloat from any organising principle that would bring real insight or deeper understanding of this community.
Director, screenplay, editing: Rob Rice
Cast: Tracy Staggs, Mark Staggs, Nikki DeParis
Producers: Rob Rice, Rui Xu, Matt Porterfield, Mark Staggs
Cinematography: Alexey Kurbatov
Music: Colyn Cameron
Production company: Hamilton Film Group (US)
International sales: Rob Rice
Venue: Oldenburg International Film Festival
In English
87 minutes
