Watched this during another insomniac wee small hours spell. A spoof documentary, or, as they call ‘em now, a mockumentary, FUBAR follows a film-maker, Farrel Mitchner (Gordon Skilling) who is himself following two white-trash stoner headbangers, Terry and Dean.
Set in suburban Alberta, Canada, it takes a while to get used to, and was filmed on a Canon XL1, giving it a very lo-fi verité flavour. With a core cast and no script, the movie was largely improvised, some scenes involving ‘John Q Public’, unaware it was actually a work of fiction. Apparently the fist-fighters, for example, were genuine.
Terry (Dave Lawrence, who made the film) and Dean (Paul Spence) are two young long-haired rocker slobs. Continually shotgunning beers, smoking (fags or weed), and living on diets of appalling junk food. They’re dumb, foul-mouthed and pretty nihilistic.
At first I found myself thinking, what’s the point of this wallowing in the kind of hippy dream turned sour that has created zombie hordes across the US, and – this is set in Canada – North (and no doubt also South) America?
It was horrifyingly salutory to see how large a part of the MAGA/Trumpite crowds of Jan 6th were longhaired losers looking very like the two chief protagonists of this film. But there’s also everyone else; the lads’ families, partners, friends, co-workers/employers, etc. And Farrel and his documentary crew.
All these others, inc Troy/Tron, a former party animal gone ‘square’, are the ‘straight’ world. Dean’s mom [sic!] recites a poem, ‘Woman Is A Danger Cat’, by her son, whilst he plays his sensitive acoustic ballad ‘Rock & Roll Is My Guitar’. Terry’s employer (or is it Dean’s? I forget!) corrects his delusional embellishments on his professional responsibilities. And Troy’s partner tells it like it is, regarding women and their effects on slacker slobs!
In some ways this film, as awful as it is in many ways, has a resonance for me, in that I lived for a while a life a little bit like theirs. The ubiquity of ‘cuss-words’, the aimless boozing and smoking, and the ‘us against the straight world’, were all part of my early twenties hippy-dream-gone-sour interlude.
But whilst we were naive, we were never so moronically dumb, nor so grotesquely ignorant and hypocritical. These dolts love to trash stuff, leaving a trail of litter in their wake (‘the park ranger’s’ll clear it up’). This particular brand of white trash rocker types seem peculiarly American (or Canadian; I have Canadian ancestry*) in their boorishness. From their ‘hockey mullet’ hairdos (very obviously wigs!) to their mix of heavy metal and ‘sportswear’ clobber.
* My grandfather and one of my uncles were Canadians. I still have relatives over there.
But, not unexpectedly, several threads are introduced to being a bit more depth. First we learn Dean has testicular cancer. And is kind of in denial. And second, the interactions between Farrel and his crew and their subjects lead to… well, we’ll get to that.
The whole cancer thread is, kind of ironically and paradoxically, the saviour of this movie, which otherwise might’ve been a pointless exercise in Ali-G’esque social satire. In the end it’s awkwardly straight Farrel whose reaction to Dean’s medical emergency catalyses the catatonic headbanger into taking appropriate action, with some chiding from his ex, Trixie.
Farrel starts out mostly off camera, but gradually becomes a more and more key character, until… blam! He’s gone. I won’t say more, not wanting to spoil it too much for those who haven’t seen this. But everything around this crucial episode is very well done, and, like the revelation re Dean’s monster nut, it elevates an otherwise mundane movie, bringing pathos and a degree of subtler human observation that’s actually both well observed and quite moving.
The film was a success at Sundance, and has spawned a sequel, Fubar II, a TV series, and some sort of online offshoots. So it’s done well for a super low budget indie affair (financed by a maxed out credit card and a parental re-mortgage; phew… that could’ve ended very badly!).
It’s very sad to say this, but the film’s low key trashiness, and the imbecilic Everyman types it portrays, make it perfect for the efflorescence of serf-culture that’s been so assiduously cultivated by the evil machinations of recent populist governments – Trump in the US, BoJo in the UK – in the so called developed Western world.
I genuinely didn’t know which way it’d go at the end. And it was nice the way it did turn out. But maybe that’ll be the aspect that makes it so very much a work of fiction? And perhaps the rise of the kind of cultures it documents in the real world won’t turn out to have such a happy ending?
Far from essential or classic, nonetheless, not too shabby. And, whilst I’m not sure I’d say ‘worth watching’, it wasn’t a total waste of time.
