Putty Hill

PUTTY HILL is a luridly shot film with a structure a lot like Richard Linklater's SLACKER or BEFORE SUNSET in its lingering upon regular townsfolk and their experiences and sensibilities. Following the death of a local, PUTTY HILL is a pretend-documentary that interviews a few people who knew the boy. What PUTTY HILL accomplishes though, by contrasting its imagery with its dull, meaningless people, is that it shows a diminishing importance of death. The complete meaninglessness of the townspeople, and their realization of their unimportance, puts a new light on the death: that it doesn't even matter if people don't matter. And thus, PUTTY HILL is a film about decline. Filmed so luridly though, it seems to suggest a preciousness of the small down, but a sad and inevitable, pervasive decline. Everyone realizes this decline, and yet there is little resistance, but a lot of 'oh wells' and small pleasures out of tragedy. In an odd and disturbing scene, the townspeople have a party in remembrance of the dead boy, but rather than walk around in black lightly eating and lightly talking, they literally party. They get drunk and dirty dance, and it becomes completely clear that this town will die slowly and painfully.
Putty Hill: ★★★