DVD REVIEW: SOUTHLANDER – Diary Of A Desperate Musician

Shane | 24 September 2016 | Reply

DVD REVIEW: SOUTHLANDER – Diary Of A Desperate Musician
MVD Visual
2016
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
7/10

Made in 2001 and featuring a raft of familiar indie music and movie faces, Southlander is the very definition of arthouse indie film making – an often surreal, sometimes (obviously) improv’d work that begs the viewer to watch under the right kind of influence and take the trip with it into lowest budget near-mayhem.

There is a feeling at times that Southlander was made by a bunch of art students high as kites who accidentally left their scripts at home that morning, but they usually fall on the right side of the huge mistake of ‘putting famous people in a room and hoping they ad lib something great.’ Even the awkward moments here are kinda cool.

Our hero Chance (played by Dazed & Confused’s Rory Cochrane) comes out of the production best: his performance is spot on even when surrounded by obvious non-actors.

Chance realises that talent is not enough to score a gig with a band, so gets his hands on a space-age MoleTron keyboard through the used musical instruments section of the Southlander newspaper to get the gig. Most of the movie is spent trawling through Southlander ads in pursuit of the keyboard after it is stolen – a kind of back alleys of Los Angeles road movie that crosses paths with Beck Hanson, Beth Orton, Hank Williams III, an ex-funk trailblazer now pimping his wife out, a spaced out tech expert-gone-new age freak, psycho cops and all sorts of others.

Southlander is definitely not for everyone – it’s arthouse, it’s cult, it is surreal, it is extremely low budget and ultra-indie. It’s pretty cool, check it out.