"The Brown Bunny"

The irony at the heart of "The Brown Bunny" is that though it's about a character whose private tragedy has alienated him, and though it's about as independent as a movie can be, it feels like the work of a man who is anything but alienated. "The Brown Bunny" must be one of the truest songs of roadside America that the movies have produced.

Anyone who has ever driven for any stretch through any part of America will recognize the look of the film immediately. It's the view you get from behind the wheel, green highway signs looming overhead, rain turning everything into a soft blur. (Part of that slight blur may be because the film, shot in 16 millimeter, has been blown up to 35.) Or the view driving through suburban neighborhoods, the feel of entering some quiet enclave simply by turning a corner, the sense that everything is sleeping yet alive, the way some well-tended (even if not prosperous) houses give off a sense of well-being while the sight of an abandoned easy chair at the curb in front of another house feels like an omen that something has gone wrong inside.

It's all so familiar it feels as if the images have been plucked from your brain, and yet I can't recall any movie that has gotten the look of America that this one has. When Bud drives down the Vegas strip, instead of the usual overhead montage of gaudy neon movies usually give us to denote Vegas, Gallo shoots the scene in broad daylight from a driver's perspective. We see an endless jumble of signs competing for our attention. It's every awful yet enticing commercial strip you've ever driven along. (Even the hookers who approach Bud's van at every corner aren't the usual overdone movie hookers. They look like real people in awful circumstances, and each one makes you wonder, what's her story?)

Bud's rare moments of rest in motels and hotels have what Truman Capote once referred to as the "white silence" of such places, the sense of temporary refuge cradled like a caesura between days of travel. The images often have the yearning sadness of a ballad because we're seeing them through the eyes of a perpetual traveler, who both wants to belong and can't bring himself to stay put.

That might be a description of not just Bud but Gallo. Not only the way he shot this movie -- traveling cross-country in the van Bud drives, hauling a three-man crew, their equipment and the motorcycle Bud races -- but in his reaction to its Cannes reception. Clearly Gallo wants to do movies his way, and clearly he's got an ego.

Gallo's outbursts at Cannes may not have been politic, but I can't think of any filmmaker who wouldn't feel wounded and dumbfounded by such a vicious reaction to such a heartfelt movie. Besides, what has being politic ever been good for in the arts? Certainly not for producing good art or the criticism that recognizes it.

I'm happy that many New York critics have been so perceptive about "The Brown Bunny," not taking part in the superior tone used to put the movie down at Cannes. In "Buffalo 66," Gallo was an unfunny prankster. In "The Brown Bunny," wearing his heart on his sleeve, he's a real filmmaker.

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