James Deen | Through the Shattered Lens

It took me a while to appreciate The Canyons.

In fact, it took me so long to appreciate this film that I’m writing a second review it. I initially reviewed The Canyons way back in 2013, the same year that it was released. I praised Lindsay Lohan’s performance as Tara, an actress who is living with a sociopathic producer named Christian (adult film actor James Deen, who was a bit of a celebrity when this film came out but whose star has dimmed considerably since). I complained that the film was too slow and that director Paul Schrader seemed to be trying too hard to find some sort of existential meaning within Bret Easton Ellis’s pulpy script. Though I didn’t really mention it in my initial review, I also felt that rest of the cast was rather dull. Lohan was great, playing a character to whom she could probably relate. Deen was stiff but oozed enough charm to be believable as the manipulative Christian. The rest of the largely unknown cast came across as being dull and somewhat lost.

Though I was nowhere near as critical of The Canyons as some critics, I still was not initially impressed. I thought of it as being a showcase for Lohan’s attempted comeback and little else. But I have to admit that The Canyons has stuck with me. It’s a film that I’ve rewatched more than a few times. While all of the flaws are still there, I have come to better appreciate the film’s languid decadence. I’ve come to see that there was a bit more wit to both Ellis’s script and Schrader’s direction than I initially realized. James Deen’s performance as Christian has grown on me. I like that he’s a neurotic sociopath. He’s evil but he’s needy and, though he’ll never admit it, he knows that he’ll be nothing if Tara ever leaves him. He’s desperate to be loved but he has no idea how to give that love back.

When I first saw the movie, I thought Nolan Funk, who played Tara’s ex-lover, was a bit dull in the role. Upon subsequent rewatches, I’ve come to see that his dullness is actually very important to the film. Ryan is written to be boring. That’s why Tara is drawn to him. His dullness provides some relief from Christian’s mood swings. But, because Ryan is so boring, he can also never truly take Christian’s place. In the end, Ryan still sells out his integrity, first to get a part and then to obsessively check in on Tara. Ryan and Christian are ultimately revealed to be two sides of the same coin. Ryan may be “the good guy,” but — in a typical Ellis and Schrader twist — there’s nothing likable or even that good about him. One gets the feeling that, if had Christian’s money, he would be just as bad.

You really do find yourself feeling sorry for Tara, who is basically trapped between two men who both want to control her. Lohan’s performance continues to be the strongest things about The Canyons. There’s a lot of courage to Lohan’s performance, courage that goes beyond taking part in the film’s sex scenes. Lohan reveals the vulnerability that’s at the heart of Tara. She’s someone who knows that she needs to escape but she also knows that she’s a creation of Hollywood. Hollywood is her home and her world and it’s hard to imagine her surviving anywhere else. Tara is interesting not because she’s trapped but because, in many ways, she would prefer to be trapped to being free.

The film’s flaws are still there, don’t get me wrong. The Canyons still has a lot of moments that don’t quite work. The opening scene, where Christian, Ryan, Tara, and Gina (Amanda Brooks, whose performance also improves on repeat viewing) have an awkward dinner, is almost laughably bad. (In that opening scene, James Deen delivers his dialogue like Dirk Diggler in Angels Live In my Town.) That said, this is a trashy and colorful movie that does stick with you. You might not want it to stick with you but it does! It’s portrayal of sexual decadence and neurotic Hollywood players is far more entertaining than it has any right to be. It may not be a great film but it is one that’s a bit more interesting than many originally thought.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Do you remember that YouTube video of Chris Crocker screaming, “LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!” while tears and eye liner ran down his face?

That’s often the way that I feel about Lindsay Lohan, a talented actress and a fellow redhead whose career has been destroyed not so much by her own mistakes but by the fact that the tabloids refuse to allow her to move on from those mistakes. It seems that, regardless of what Lindsay Lohan does, not a single story will be written about her that doesn’t mention that she’s spent time in rehab and jail or that doesn’t offer up some sort of tawdry speculation about her private life.

And that’s unfortunate because, regardless of what the tabloids may say, Lindsay Lohan remains an excellent actress who is capable of doing a lot more than parodying her own image in Scary Movie 5.

Consider, for instance, her performance in The Canyons.

In The Canyons, Lohan plays Tara, the world-weary girlfriend of a wealthy sociopath named Christian (James Deen, who may not be a great actor but still projects a proper mix of charm and menace). Christian is a film producer whose need to control and dominate is demonstrated in both the way he manipulates actor Ryan (Nolan Funk) and the way he arranges for Tara to have sex with strangers while he films the action.

Tara and Christian live a life that epitomizes empty luxury, an existence defined of ennui where casual cruelty is the norm. However, when he discovers that Tara is secretly having an affair with Ryan, Christian’s carefully constructed facade of control starts to fade away. Perhaps not surprisingly, Christian’s obsessiveness and manipulative mind games eventually lead to a brutal act of violence…

When it was released earlier this year, The Canyons got terrible reviews and the film is definitely uneven. Bret Easton Ellis’s script is predictable and, while director Paul Schrader captures some haunting images of Los Angeles at its most languid, the film also is a bit too slow for its own good. Schrader takes Ellis’s pulpy script and attempts to use it to craft an existential portrait of American culture and he doesn’t quite succeed.

However, to a large extent, The Canyons is redeemed by Lohan’s excellent performance. In Lohan’s hands, Tara becomes a survivor who has sacrificed her innocence but still has yet to develop the hardness that one needs to survive in Ellis and Schrader’s Los Angeles. As cynical and decadent a character as Tara may be, Lohan plays her with just enough hints of optimism that it’s impossible not to regret the loss of who she was before she met Christian.

It’s a performance that manages to redeem a film that, without Lohan, would have been one of the worst films of 2013.

For that reason alone, perhaps it’s time to leave Lindsay alone and she what she’s capable of doing when she’s simply allowed to act.