The Color Wheel, or: An aimless generation

The Color Wheel (2012)

Directed by Alex Ross Perry

***SPOILERS***

For some reason, the only comparisons I want to associate with Alex Ross Perry’s The Color Wheel involve horror movies (side note: cinematographer Sean Price Williams noted in our interview how the central couple's relationship reminded him of a "formula studied from horror films"). The entire time I was watching Pascal Laugier’s The Tall Man, all I could kept thinking was, “Yup, the ‘Tall Man’ is gonna steal Jessica Biel’s kid.” The movie takes the time to build an inescapable aura around the podunk of Cold Rock, trapping its characters and ensuring a sense of internal struggle and resolution. So, of course, the climax occurs in the private realm, thus insuring every itching moment within that realm is building towards an inevitable kidnapping and all of the resolution associated with The Tall Man’s mysteries.

This idea of entrapment is taken to the nth level by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury with Inside, which features a pregnant mother (Sarah) struggling to keep away a demon (The Woman) on the eve of her delivery. The action takes place entirely within the pregnant woman’s home, and as her evil twin slowly inches towards her—from cracking the glass on her patio door, to killing the protective policemen, to stabbing Sarah’s hand with a pair of scissors. The climax of The Woman slicing open Sarah’s belly is, when associated with the theme of the mental and physical struggle of motherhood, not all that shocking. Yet, the imminence of death doesn’t render its impact or the surrounding material any less powerful. If anything, experiencing the inevitable can be quite the relief. I continually dreaded the prospect of The Woman ripping open Sarah's stomach and stealing her child, but when it finally happened, a sense of calm washed over me. The tension stops itching, and clarity settles in.

This entire process happened to me when watching The Color Wheel. I’m not sure when it happened—perhaps when the crazy Christian made JR (Carlen Altman) and Colin (Alex Ross Perry) kiss—but early in the film, the thought came to me: “There’s some sexual tension between this brother and sister.” Little did I know that this thought would not only manifest into an act of incest, but also provide an astounding sense of clarity and relief that comes with many of life's burdens.

I think it’s safe to say that some films’ first intentions are to shock, awe, and provide discomfort for the viewer. Fucking Klown comes to mind (it’s neck-and-neck with Argo and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen for the year’s biggest pile of cinematic shit), where creating awkwardness suddenly becomes an art form, despite no intentions of intertwining such awkwardness with the slightest bit of character depth. So with The Color Wheel being a film that challenge's its audience's comfort threshold, it's safe to say that sometimes movies are unfairly grouped together, and films full of unlikable characters always fit the bill. I’ve read comparisons between Perry and Noah Baumbach (an incredibly polarizing filmmaker), and I didn’t even bat an eyelash towards it. People want to hate what they’re not comfortable with, and since The Color Wheel features two unlikable people dealing with the most uncomfortable thing of all (INCEST), I think it’s safe to say that The Color Wheel will polarize audiences.

But since I’m fucked up, I’ll go ahead and note how liberating I found The Color Wheel. Not because I have any intention of seducing my hot cousin and need to be absolved, but because the inevitability of JR and Colin’s hook-up is both an expression of their frustrations and an endearing act of fortitude. Not that I’m advocating incest here, but there’s an artistic process involved with building these two individuals and breaking them down into their weakened states of mind in order to produce an emancipated result. So much like my internal struggle with The Tall Man and Inside, I was shaking as Colin lied down next to his sister, discussing family dildos and dreams of becoming a teacher. And then, when it happened—when they finally kissed—I stopped shaking. I just…watched. And it was the strangest feeling.

How did I get here? Or maybe I should be asking: how did Alex Ross Perry get me here? 

Perry said in an interview with Slant:

“I just think that sexual tension is a very specific way to express that someone is not getting all they want in their life. If you have two characters that are very sexually frustrated then I think it's easy to infer that other aspects of their lives are frustrating and unfulfilled as well.”

In my interview with The Color Wheel’s cinematographer Sean Price Williams, I dangerously referred to Perry’s film as a “generational” one. But JR and Colin’s collective frustrations regarding their aimlessness in life reminds me of Mike Waters in My Own Private Idaho, and it occurred to me that the level of such anguish becomes more pronounced with each passing decade. If Gus Vant Sant chose to portray this struggle by melodramatically combining Shakespeare and queer cinema, so be it. I find The Color Wheel’s eruption of sustained sexual dissatisfaction to be on Inside’s level, and appropriately suited to Generation Z’s lack of identity and the subsequent search for it.

As mentioned in the above quote, sexual tension is just one way to explore such a wandering mindset. And, as done in both The Tall Man and Inside, the longer you contain those frustrations, the more bombastic the result. The first step in creating this sense of claustrophobia would be trapping brother and sister in a car together for a good ole fashioned road-trip rom-com—where the road can present all of life’s passing opportunities, but none of the spatial freedoms that accompany sharing a motorcycle with Keanu Reeves. While My Own Private Idaho is very much in search of an answer, constantly racing towards its vague location, The Color Wheel will inevitably reach its destination and then bask in its complications. So the journey becomes all the more integral, building JR and Colin’s directionless frustrations in life and accompanying them with the desire to get one’s nut off.

This is obviously done through imagery and dialogue, both of which are in full force as JR changes in the bathroom. It’s the second-most (that final scene!) unrelenting sense of claustrophobia in the film, as JR stands in her underwear and stares at the awkwardly positioned Colin in the mirror. So of course the sense of entrapment Perry wishes to establish can take physical form in these occasions, along with discussions of being molested by the babysitter and close-ups of Colin’s crotch. But in keeping with the generational statement, there’s much more power in the aimless journey towards a distinct location, where JR and Colin will arrive and expect answers to life’s problems.

So in JR’s case, creating a bubble to burst free from will make her “burst” all the more assuaging. “The say if you put your hopes and dreams on paper, they’re more likely to come true,” says JR, holding up a hilariously pathetic diagram of, you guessed it, her "hopes and dreams!!!!!!" In both JR and Colin’s case, there’s a constant clash of the present’s ideals versus the past’s, and this attachment to solving one’s problems through extraneous methods is the hip new trend. After decades of both insightful philosophy and moronic motivational speakers, it is clear that JR is constantly looking to define her place in life so succinctly that it can fit in a diagram—a pressure associated with an entire generation (from my personal experience, anyway).

JR has attached such frustrations to both her lack of employment and a crippling relationship with her professor, both of which are intertwined because of her professor’s lie of providing her a broadcasting job. During her incredibly awkward argument with the professor, it is clear JR has no sense of direction, as she cannot even properly defend her ex-lover’s asinine reprimand. She moves from this douchebag to the next, as she confronts the local news anchor Ms. Wagner. She searches for clarity in another adult figure, is subsequently denied once again, and then is forced to lie to her friends upon leaving the café. Identifying one’s self in this generation comes inherently paired with a yearly salary, seen as her friends immediately inquire about JR’s career to define her trajectory in life. Thus, when confronted by a gathering of pedantic partygoers that would make Whit Stillman proud, JR’s instinct becomes to lie. The pressure to create an identity for herself becomes her ticket of acceptance, which takes side-splitting form in the moment we catch the boy "ridden with polio" suddenly walking away from his wheelchair. It’s a small moment created for comedic effect, but it’s good comedy because it further encapsulates the pressure to define one’s self. In JR’s case, the only moments we don’t find her being fake is with Colin, thus making their sexual discharge perhaps the only honest moment of expression throughout the entire film.

Another pressure brought on by previous generations is one of romance—a world where a God-loving motel clerk enforces a “must kiss” policy and believes “sixteen is a good age for a girl to have a baby.” While JR is leaving her relationship, Colin is on the downward slope with his. They’ve been dating for 3 ½ years, “but it feels like four,” and she won’t even touch his wiener on a week-long romantic getaway. Despite his hesitancy in traveling with JR, Colin is searching for some form of solace in their ultimate destination. Less than excited about his current relationship, the prospect of hooking up with his childhood crush becomes his seeming way out. It’s this limp-dicked attachment to the past that amplifies his and JR’s relationship, as his desire to expel his frustrations through a feeling more comfortably relatable to the past takes surrogate form through his sister, once again pronouncing the search for identity and purpose through something as unsophisticated as a quickie.

But there’s nothing ungenuine about JR and Colin’s passionate display of suppressed emotion set free, as it marks the moment we stop wondering about the trivial “will-they-won’t-they” mysteries of romantic comedies and accept the inevitable. Once I did, I experienced a calming sensation…"What a relief!" I could scream if I weren’t so fixated on Perry’s tight close-up of brother and sister's interlocked lips. While I’m sure there’s a twinge of regret hanging over JR’s head as she awakes from her slumber, there must also be an undeniable sense of relief as well. The very nature of their sexual excursion and its implications transcend the discussion of incest and propel Colin and JR’s story into one of fighting against suppression. JR expresses this in an elongated scenario she dreams up for her brother as a teacher, where her desire to create an identity takes a lovingly saccharine form. It both reestablishes the bond the pair shares and provides an ideal destination neither seem capable of achieving. 

It may seem a bit melodramatic or unsatisfying, but the troubles of Generation Z are as undefinable as its collective identity. With this in mind, the love JR and Colin share takes a derivative form from a generation’s frustrations, but holds a unique identity for the party involved. I would say that this realization is what made me stop shaking in my seat and find clarity in a feeling I continually repress: the moment we stop attaching our problems to surrounding people and just express ourselves is when we form a true identity. JR and Colin aren’t exactly role models, but I think their shared honesty in this final scene is something this entire generation can aspire to.

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