'The way I see it, you have people who own lawns and people who mow them. And they're never the same'
Lawn Dogs 7.7
Trent (Sam Rockwell) is a lawn dog, a gardener for hire, tending to the lush lawns adorning the big houses in Camelot Gardens, an affluent community of high class families. He is scruffy, unkempt, not in fitting with his surroundings, until he goes home to his trailer in the middle of the woods. Mischa Barton, in an unexpectedly great performance, is Devon. A young only child to a stereotypically distant mother and a father who sounds like a motivational quote book. They are loving on the surface, but oblivious to what a child really needs. The two actors are great together. Rockwell often can quietly steal a film, but Barton is perhaps even the better of the two here.
The film on one hand is about how people deal with boredom, and on the other, about how meaningful relationships can come out of nowhere. Devon is bored of the suburban cookie cutter life and her woefully short-sighted parents. Trent is bored of his meager existence and being looked down on whilst serving the upper class estate. They meet whilst she is out selling cookies. Before long they are the only people in the world that understand eachother.
Alot of thier attitudes are shown cleverly through taking the time to show inconsequential details. She discards her new socks her mum I so precious of. He holds up traffic to dive off a bridge into the river below. We feel empathy for both characters, they are each sidelined by society, even though one happens with smiles and one with scowls.
There is an unspoken theme of homosexuality between Trent and one of the local rich kids. They have a couple of quiet moments alone together which feel intimate yet laboured, as if something has happened previously which neither can really admit to. I don't think it adds anything in truth, but isn't so counterproductive to harm the audience experience.
The feeling of the film works in capturing the mood and subdued pace of life but also it's a quirky take on rebellion and inescapable class politics. Everyone is bored, even if they don't know it. There's a bit of small town feelings of The Straight Story and What's Eating Gilbert Grape. There is some real personality to all aspects of the film, including a great scene of Bruce's Dancing in the Dark.
The last five minutes become laced with unexpected and joyful poetic fantasy. I loved these moments, I always have affection for films that can break thier mouldings and show something totally unexpected (often illogical) like that. Admittedly It doesnt always work but it always shows artistic ambition and freedom which I appreciate - perhaps no film does it better than Magnolia with it's inexplicable amphibian precipitation.
Technically it was very accomplished without feeling particularly polished. There are nice shots of split focus, slow motion or close ups used to good effect throughout, a great soundtrack and some decent foreshadowing. It was a really nice film well worth seeing, sweet like Garden State, perceptive like Swingers, thought provoking like Short Term 12, but also not entirely like anything else I've seen.
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