Things Behind the Sun (2001) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski) and Tuna

We agree that this obscure film is an unheralded small-audience masterpiece that digs deep into the soul of the auteur. You have to be pretty damned jaded not to be moved by this one.

Scoop's comments in white

Things Behind the Sun is an excellent movie, but one so intensely personal that it is uncomfortable to watch. Writer/Director Alison Anders was raped when she was 12 years old, then brutally manhandled by a stepfather until she ran away from home at 17. This period in her life left her damaged in many ways, and she has probably struggled to cope with and understand the damage to this very day. She took all of the outrage and sadness about her interrupted childhood and put it into this semi-autobiographical movie. Your emotional reaction to this film will be even further intensified when you realize that the rape in the film was shot in the very same house in which the director was actually raped as a child. Talk about drama as catharsis.

Kim Dickens plays the rape victim, the character who serves as Anders's alter ego. She's the lead singer of a garage band which has started to attract some notice on college radio stations because of a cult hit which is really about the rape incident. The group has become famous enough to attract the attention of a magazine like Rolling Stone. One of the magazine's writers realizes that he knew the lead singer when they were children, and endeavors to write the definitive article about her burgeoning career. In reality, he had once been her best friend in childhood, and was later one of the boys who raped her. His big brother engineered the rape, and forced the younger brother to participate after the older boys were finished. The brutal incident affected him as much as it affected the rape victim. As we join in on the present time, he has never been able to make love to a woman at all, and she has spent her adult life getting drunk and re-enacting the rape with multiple strangers.

When the writer arrives to begin the interviews, he realizes that the woman doesn't remember anything about their childhood friendship, and has repressed all specific memories of the rape itself. The singer thinks at first that his real agenda is simply her music, so her attitude toward him keeps shifting as more and more is revealed.

This film has a very economical script and a gritty feeling of reality to it. The first half doesn't establish much emotional connection to the characters, but the second half is intense, involving, and sad, although it does leave a bit of room for hope at the end. I really found myself being impressed and drawn in by the stark honesty of the script, and I recommend it freely to anyone who finds the description appealing, but I have to caution you that the film has some limitations:

• Anders couldn't get the funding to shoot it on 35mm, so the entire project went to DV. The cinematography is quite competent, even inspired, but it definitely looks cheap and homemade.
• It is a movie about a band with limited talent. The film shows them playing much more of their music than necessary, including full-length numbers. The way I see it, if the film is about Mozart or Ray Charles, load up on the music, but if it is about a garage band ... well, there's only so much garage band music I can handle. Show me a little if you must, so I can get the points that need to be made, but don't drag it out.

Tuna's comments in yellow

Things Behind the Sun (2001) is an Independent film from writer/director Allison Anders, in large part based on her own rape at a very young age. As the film opens, her alter ego (Kim Dickens), passes out drunk on the lawn of a house. We have no idea why. We soon learn that she doesn't either, but this is the third year in a row that she has done this. Normally, she is kept busy being the drunken lead singer of a band whose music, in large part, talks about her gang rape as a young girl. The rest of her time is spend being a pain to her manager and wannabe savior and lover, Don Cheadle.

Meanwhile, an LA music reporter helps his girlfriend champion a project to interview Dickens. The editor wants no part of the travel budget until the writer mentions that he knows who the rapist is. He is assigned the story, much to the chagrin of his girlfriend who unearthed it.  So the scribe is off to Florida. Along the way, he visits his older brother in prison. Through a series of flashbacks, we eventually learn all about the gang rape, actually one of many committed in the house, all spearheaded by the older brother. As if gang rape weren't enough for a 12 year old to endure, she also ended up with VD, leaving her sterile. From that point on she could only be intimate with men she didn't know, always more than one at a time, and always restrained.

This is not a typical rape story where the victim is a sweet, sympathetic character and all of the rapists pure evil (although the older brother is pretty much all bad). Rather, we see that the experience turned the victim into a dysfunctional adult, and that she was not the only one permanently affected. The film takes place long after the rape, and shows the lasting effects of this crime. 

Things Behind the Sun was shot on a very aggressive schedule on digital video, but is technically sound. Since both leads are part of the music business, the songs and sound track were very important, and Anders got clearance on an amazing number of songs for the soundtrack. All of the performances were spot on. The flashbacks where specially adjusted to have a very different look than the current time stuff. They were shot highly saturated, desaturated, then pumped with yellow and red, for a very distinctive feel that was nonetheless very clear.

It is hard to imagine that anyone could watch this film without being moved by it. So much of it has the ring of truth. This is not a feel good film, although each of the characters finds all the redemption they deserve, but it is certainly an effective one, and will give most people many things to think about.