Ivans XTC (DVD)

When people speak of films being powerful they are speaking of films like IvansXTC. British director Bernard Rose, best known for the lushly effective horror Candyman and Immortal Beloved, moved to Hollywood and clearly did not have a good time. IvansXTC feels like guerrilla filmmaking. Shot on digital video it has a grainy, sometimes shaky feel, like Lar von Trier and co.'s Dogme films.

Based loosely on Tolstoy's 'The Death of Ivan ...
...goodtime Hollywood agent Ivan Beckman, and his coming to terms with discovering he has cancer. Surrounding him are those he cannot confide in and ultimately are using him just as much as he is using them, whether Peter Weller's gun totting, right wing, whoring star that he poaches from another agency or his girlfriend, Lisa Enos (who co-wrote the film with Rose). There are no relationships here that function normally - Weller, as star Don West, snorts ... more

When people speak of films being powerful they are speaking of films like IvansXTC. British director Bernard Rose, best known for the lushly effective horror Candyman and Immortal Beloved, moved to Hollywood and clearly did not have a good time. IvansXTC feels like guerrilla filmmaking. Shot on digital video it has a grainy, sometimes shaky feel, like Lar von Trier and co.'s Dogme films.

Based loosely on Tolstoy's 'The Death of Ivan Ilych', the film concerns itself with Danny Huston's shallow, coke-snorting, goodtime Hollywood agent Ivan Beckman, and his coming to terms with discovering he has cancer. Surrounding him are those he cannot confide in and ultimately are using him just as much as he is using them, whether Peter Weller's gun totting, right wing, whoring star that he poaches from another agency or his girlfriend, Lisa Enos (who co-wrote the film with Rose). There are no relationships here that function normally - Weller, as star Don West, snorts cocaine from Beckman's girlfriend's, (Charlotte) thigh in a limo. West's relationship with Beckman is usually one of sex, drugs and more sex and more drugs. Weller's West is not a star you'd want in a Disney film. Then neither is Beckman an agent you would want signing up a star to a Disney film. Though Beckman does sign West to a film penned by writer Danny McTeague, and it is interesting to note that McTeague is just as unpleasant and selfish a character as both Beckman, West and Charlotte. Normally you would expect the writer, even if caught up in Hollywood's excesses, to be something of a voice of reason (even Sunset Boulevard adheres to this to some measure) but no, McTeague is both a talentless hack and a deeply unpleasant man. McTeague, appearing going to Beckman's funeral does nothing but strike up an argument with Don West.

The structure of film is unusual in that the first fifteen minutes are all told in flashback, making Beckman's death quite clear, his voice quoting lines from the film, especially, and importantly, how Beckman, one night in terrible pain because of the cancer (though at the time we don't know that this is the reason), attempts to bring to mind one worthwhile image to get him through the night but he can only think of 'shit'. Immediately, we are then drawn into Beckman's world and how Don West and others greet the news of Beckman's death. When told he had cancer, they laugh, assuming he has over-dosed (West states: 'he was a pussy freak' and then goes to show the rep from Beckman's agency the gun he keeps under his bed). It is a cover story to hide Beckman's excess, they believe. Because they cannot imagine anyone caring, or anyone living normal lives, with a shred of decency they make Beckman's death in their own image. Don West is also a 'pussy freak' and consumes copious drugs, thus he cannot imagine a world in which cancer could creep into. Sex and drugs lead inexorably to death, thus Beckman's death must have been down to sex and drugs.

We then settle down into the story, move back in time to a few days before Beckman learns of his cancer and before he is able to poaches Don West from his previous agency to his own and for which he is regaled as a hero. Not that the people at his agency really care about him. He is important because he brings in big clients and the money. Even the script that writer McTeague has written and Don West signs up for is described as being without merit. All is money. And so when Beckman has to go to see his doctor upon learning of his cancer and it is suggested to take a friend, the only person that he is almost able to ask is his secretary that though a part of his agency she is more grounded in the day to day. Nevertheless, she is too busy to go.

But this is not a film without humanity, for several reasons. On the face of it there are only really two characters that have any particular human warmth. Both are nurses, the one who forces Beckman to have his health checks (she has that treats-ever-one-the-same-common-or-garden humanity about her. Beckman is not a monster to her but a human being) and the nurse that cares for him as he lies alone and dying, barely conscious of what is transpiring about him at the hospital. In fact, Beckman is only ever once able to tell anyone about his cancer, a scene wherein two prostitutes have come to his house and one of them spies his pills, stating her mother took them. It is a curious and powerful scene. Having snorted lines of cocaine you expect the hedonism of earlier in the film to continue but a strange quiet falls over the scene as Beckman suddenly crumbles and he tells them of his terrible pain and the need to visual one worthwhile image. It is a scene of considerable power, all the more so for the women's desire to leave - this is more than they asked for. Hedonism and excess is one thing, human emotion is another. Though Beckman talks, he talks at them, as he has built up a life about himself devoid of meaningful contact. He is the victim of both his own success and the enforced coldness and vapidity of his life.

Ivan Beckman should be a vile character. Like Peter Weller's Don West, as through Weller he becomes a thoroughly depraved, debauched bacchanalian who you can only dislike. But not even love to dislike. Don West is a vile character, expertly played by Weller; he seems eerily real. You can imagine West snorting lines of cocaine off the thighs of women in limos and surrounding himself with hangers-on, prostitutes, whilst pretending to be somehow homely and nice. His briefly alluded to wife seems to be Mexican and exists more as a servant to look after the children - in fact about the only time she is mentioned we think that she is the maid. West wants something nice for the cameras before he goes out whoring. Danny Huston (son of the great director John Huston; and brother to Angelica) is an absolute revelation as Ivan Beckman. Normally Huston plays rather more easygoing, relaxed characters (or at least since IvansXTC) but here he does the impossible: he infuses Beckman with pathos, with humanity. We are actually able to care for Beckman, because in Danny Huston's face we can see the desperation, it practically seethes from him: the need to find some human connection. Even when he explodes into an orgy of drug infused hedonism to escape the recognition of his cancer, you can feel the humanity somewhere under the surface. Unlike Don West, Beckman on some level wants to be saved - to have meaningful contact. Huston's Beckman certainly doesn't want an ordinary life, and does not so much regret his life as wanting to be able to find that moment of beauty, that connection to people. There is something latent in Beckman, not something good that's just bursting to get out - he's more than happy to be duplicitous and ruthless but he retains the capacity for humanity that those around him seem to have lost. And so though we don't exactly feel sorry for him, we respond to Beckman emotionally; there is enough humanity in Danny Huston's performance to allow us not to just abandon him in his agony. This is a monumental ability, I believe, as without this incredible and difficult performance the film would collapse under the weight of its narcissistic characters. We would feel adrift in a sea of hedonism and shallow lack of humanity.

The sense of realness of hedonism is greatly down to Rose's direction and decision to film on digital video, as it lends the film a style more akin to a documentary than a feature film. We don't really feel like we are watching a film but following a lone, invisible camera as it follows a man in meltdown and then briefly watches those people that Beckman might have called friends but he may as well have called enemies. Moreover, Weller's and Huston's performances (though the supporting cast are also excellent) feel real. Their power never feels contrived like a De Niro performance, where you can feel the artifice leaking from it. There is something uncannily natural about them. Pick them up and place them in a real Hollywood party and they would fit right in.

Though perhaps a little startling to begin with, the camera being jagged and the lighting natural; the flashback causing you to interact with the film, IvansXTC is a staggering piece of work, and perhaps one of the most genuinely powerful and moving that I have ever seen. When it was first released I noticed the reviews of Huston's performance were rave but I didn't see the film until recently and there were certainly right to rave. Equally, Peter Weller, who is usually so underused and yet very talented, backs him up all the way as the distasteful Don West. I think what sums this film up best is that ultimately it moves you; you comes away from the film feeling different; good different that is. It is a film that could have you leaving the cinema or turning off the DVD and feeling sordid and sullied. But no, IvansXTC is instead a film of originality and potency, with an underlying humanity missing in so many books and films about Hollywood. At its core is a sense of rightness brought to it by the director, the script and the actors. They succeed where so many have failed, and where one thinks they should have themselves. Especially as some consider Rose's film directed by spite at coming to Hollywood and finding it so much to his dislike, by jealousy to the bitter taste it left in his mouth when it failed him. But I don't think so. You could not be jealous of anyone in this film. Equally the latent humanity clearly proves that though a lot of the film is based on Rose's own experiences, it is not bitter, rather you can't help but think it a cathartic film for Rose. Possibly for Huston and Weller, too.
 

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