Undescribable Perfection

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Wow! Help me somebody! I had no idea boring could go on so long. I have yet to see the point of this movie or is it a documentary? Scenes that were overshot and entirely too long. The sound was awful, I rewound several times to try and figure out what was said. The main character who over dosed is obviously as insignificant as all the other people in the town. It was one boring cigarette smoking person after another (when they weren't smoking weed). Cigarttes must be 10 cents a pack there because everybody smokes and smokes and smokes. Can you say lung cancer.I have yet to get the point. Obviously the film maker was getting off on carrying around a camera and having people ask him if he is making a film. He may have potential, but he needs to save it for when he has a real story and not this ongoing ingrown toe nail.

American screenwriter and director Matthew Porterfield's second feature film which he co-wrote with screenwriter Jordan Mintzer, premiered in the Forum section at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival in 2010, was shot on locations in Baltimore, Maryland in the United States of America and is an American production which was produced by producers Eric Bannat, Steve Holmgren, Jordan Mintzer and Joyce Kim. It tells the story about a 24-year-old man named Cory who has died from a heroin overdose and his family, friends and those who knew of him.Distinctly and subtly directed by American filmmaker Matthew Porterfield, this quietly paced fictional tale which is narrated from multiple viewpoints, draws a reflective portrayal of how various human beings are affected by the death of a young man and especially his sister named Zoe who has returned to Baltimore from Delaware to attend his upcoming funeral. While notable for it's authentic and distinct milieu depictions, prominent cinematography by cinematographer Jeremy Saulnier and use of sound, this conversational story where the main character is the only character whom is not physically present centres its focus on numerous characters and their individual and related stories.This humanistic and earth-bounded drama which is set during a summer in a closely connected community in the United States and where an approaching memorial causes contemplation amongst many, is impelled and reinforced by it's loose narrative structure, subtle character development and continuity, abrupt editing, documentary-like style and the naturalistic acting performances by actors and actresses Sky Ferreira, Cody Ray, Dustin Ray, Zoe Vance, James Siebor, Cathy Evans, Ed Sauer and Virginia Heath. A cinematic, atmospheric and modernistic indie from the late 2000s where the style of filmmaking is given more substance than the characters.

A young man dies of an overdose. The day before the funeral, someone unknown (not necessarily a documentary filmmaker) asks his family members and friends about him, and about their lives, and we see small pieces of their everyday activities. That's actually, I think, a terrific idea for a micro-budget indie film.And in fact I was prepared to love this movie. I have no problem with slow and/or "plotless" movies (see my most-useful review here of Greenberg) and I've adored many art-house movies with relatively low IMDb ratings. Even more promisingly, the film's two greatest champions have been Roger Ebert (only **** review at Metacritic) and Andrew O'Hehir of Salon (author of the DVD booklet essay)--and I think they're unquestionably the two best critics in America.So what went wrong? Why did I give this movie a C+ grade and a 4/10 (equivalent to a 5 or 6 for most other graders, I think)? It's the cognitive psychology of the storytelling (yes, I'm the guy who has been threatening to start a blog called "This is Your Brain at the Movies").Human brains are storytelling machines. We edit and re-cut our memories to make better stories than the actual reality. I'm sure that most people reading this above a certain age can think of a story they've told about themselves that they later discovered (by reading an old letter or journal entry, etc.) wasn't quite right or true, that had been turned into a *better, more dramatic story* by their brain.Narratives in fiction have traditionally been these kinds of stories (call them Stories with a capital S). A relatively recent and, I think, tremendously admirable goal of cutting-edge narrative has been to get past Stories and give us true stories (with a small s) -- to show events as they really happen in life, with all their actual messiness and lack of cohesion. And note that while real life may not have capital-S Stories, it still has small-s stories. There are still events that cause other events. They just form a less satisfying pattern than we remember.The trouble with Putty Hill is that it is so insistent on avoiding Story that it actually goes out of its way to avoid (small-s) story, too. It is, by turns, unrealistic and manipulative in avoiding story.One of the points director Porterfield wants to make about the deceased Cory is that he's essentially a cipher that no one knew well. But no one interviewed about him talks about him as real people would talk about someone they knew, no matter how remotely. And that's because we remember people most vividly not by generalities, but by *anecdote*. There isn't a single anecdote told about Cory. In fact, the only information we get about him beyond his drug problem comes from fellow skateboarder Cody, who tells us that Cory was terrific ("insane"), but in any kind of real life, this assertion would be followed by "there was this one time where Cory ...". Because the generality is derived from specific incident, from anecdote. Fifty years from now, it's possible (though still unlikely) that Cody may remember only that he thought Cory was "insane" without being able to remember the stunt that made him think so, but two or three years later? No way.The film is also manipulative in its selection of information. If you've interviewed the brother of one of (if I got this straight) Cory's cousin's friends, who admits to barely knowing Cory, you really have to interview Cory's mother. There's a point in the film where this is obviously coming next, but then it doesn't happen. (Since all these interviews were apparently improvised, my guess is that it was shot, but then was decreed to be not worthy of inclusion. If so, Porterfield should have realized this during the shoot, and asked for another take.)I would have loved a movie where everyone who knew Cory told their favorite anecdote about him, and the anecdotes *failed to congeal as expected, and failed to reveal anything about him.* You would have created an expectation in the viewer that these anecdotes would at least paint a coherent portrait, and might even reveal a secret, discernible only to us who had heard them all. Defying that expectation would have made a terrific point about the difference between Story and mere story, would have shown that many lost souls remain unknowable no matter how much we learn about them. (And if you've read "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and/or "Seymour: An Introduction," you know exactly what I'm talking about.) We would have gradually realized that the secret being revealed to us about Cory was that there was, sadly, no secret to reveal. But making Cory unknowable by not providing us with a realistic amount of information about him is, to me, profoundly unsatisfying.(I'm both a psych major and a bit of a theorist about narrative, so I find it credible that all this might strike me as grossly unrealistic while not striking the likes of Ebert and O'Hehir that way. But based on the IMDb rating distribution, I think there are many other viewers who liked many of the art-house elements, but had the same or similar problem, even if they couldn't put their finger on what exactly was missing.)It seems likely that this movie will remain a favorite of a small minority of smart viewers but remain unsatisfying to the vast majority, everyone, that is, who demands at least small-s story from a film that purports to be naturalistic. In the meantime, I'll be watching Porterfield, because he's a real talent. He just needs a better understanding of story, and a better grasp of his own stylistic strengths (see my message board post on that).

A junkie's house, a boy's death. Girls smoking in the woods. Cops on the hunt for a bank robber. Grandma is a good egg. Tagger – "Rest in Peace, Cory." A girl comes home to her estranged father's tattoo party. A karaoke wake. Visiting a dead brother's junkie lair at night. All he kept was his skateboard. The friendship of girls.Putty Hill in the Northeast of Baltimore is both urban and bucolic. A filmmaker was working a coming-of-age tale about a group of metal-heads skirting the fringes of Baltimore. It was a timely script, but financing fell through. To rescue the work of everyone involved, he shot a new film in 12 days.A triumph of salvage. Not to be missed.