The Sheila Variations

Baxter

Oh. my. God. SEE this movie.

It is called Baxter - and it is one of Emily's favorite films - she sent it east, to be passed from Bill McCabe to me so we both could see it too...Emily wrote a review of Baxter for Blogcritics - Read it here.

"Baxter" is the story of Baxter, who is a Bull Terrier ... who thinks things, and is envious of humans, and wants to meet a human who is "like" him ... He wants to be a part of the human world, he wants to understand. But those pesky humans keep getting in the way.

It is an absolutely hysterical film - but also ... well, quite frankly, it is rather disturbing, but there are also parts of it that are very moving, and eerie. (The scene at the graveyard comes to mind - when the old man comes to visit his friend who has died, and she appears to him.)

First impressions, favorite moments:

-- all of the extreme close-ups of Baxter's face. Baxter is a bull terrier. The camera gets right up in his face. Sometimes all you see are his eyeballs. He looks so pathetic - the face is so hilarious - and the profile. The profile was too much as he stared longingly across the street at the house of the young couple.

-- the VOICE of Baxter the dog. Baxter speaks in a male voice, very low and gravelly, and he sounds like he could literally go off the deep end and snap at any moment.

-- I loved the words of Baxter as well. He spoke in very blunt cut-and-dry terms. I laughed UPROARIOUSLY at this part: he was living with "the old lady" (what a chaotic unhappy time in his life) - and she wouldn't let him go outside, and everything was weird for him, and he became obsessed with the couple across the street. He had "unnatural thoughts" (HAHA). He would sneak to the window to stare at them. Multiple shots of the profile of the dog's face as he looks out the window, which was funnier every time I saw it. The Old Lady closes the door of her bedroom, and he can't go in there. Here comes the voiceover:

"She does things in there I'm not allowed to see. So I go to the window and imagine that I am smelling the garden."

All said in this kind of barely-psychotic voice-over voice. I HOWLED.

-- I also loved the shots of Baxter running like mad behind the kid's bike (before their relationship turned sour as well). Oh, he was so happy - he was running SO HARD - with this little bow-legged run - but you know that in his heart, this is one messed-up dog, who has already killed The Old Lady and tried to kill "the creature" (the newborn baby of the couple across the street) - so his glee at running down the street is intensely disturbing.

-- Oh, and how could I forget: Baxter in the damn tutu. I couldn't STAND IT. I was howling with laughter. Baxter, with that psycho male voiceover voice, in a tutu, being made to stand on his hind legs and dance.

The indignity of it all. The indignity of being a dog.

Yes, and Emily, that one line: "If it weren't for Hitler, it would have made a great love story" was classic.

There were so many great lines. Baxter's ruminations on life with all these different people, what people smell like, what he senses in them - how the little boy is the only one he really loves - because the little boy trains him, and harshly. Baxter confesses that it "hurts" not to obey the command "Heel".

But Baxter ... poor Baxter ... cannot keep from thinking "unnatural thoughts" (who among us can, really?) and so he must pay the price ...

It's a great movie.

Thank you, Emily, for passing it along! After telling me and Bill about it those months ago at the speakeasy in the West Village....(was that before or after we toasted Tony Blair?)

Posted by sheila