The Long Walk-Mattie Do

I picked up Mattie Do's film The Long Walk on a whim from the library and had no prior knowledge of her work.

I've been more willing to take chances on obscure films from foreign countries as I believe that is the best educator for those lacking the funds to travel the globe and before watching The Long Walk I don't believe I had seen a Laos film.

This film was an exceptionally tricky Rubik's cube to align and even after watching the Q&A and the director's introduction I still don't believe that I am close to understanding the plot.

Mattie Do, in her introduction, even says "This movie is best understood as a jigsaw puzzle where I took all the pieces and threw them all over the room and then left while you try to figure out how to put it all back together."

With this as the nucleus of my compass, I was willing to let several instances slip by without bothering to dig any deeper than necessary. But by the end of the film, I felt as if maybe I shouldn't have adopted such a haphazard attitude to certain details that might have tied this movie together. Either way, I was about as lost at the end as I was upon my first viewing of Under The Silver Lake.

The plot was difficult to follow at times and spoke through a lot of metaphors, but, again, this was the directors' intention. So I don't exactly hold that against Mattie and rather prefer a film that works through subterfuge to deliver that ultimate "AHA!" moment.

But for me it just never arrived.

It is tough to review this plot absent of spoiler alerts because it skips around in time with such frequency, so be forewarned, but here it is in a nutshell:

The Long Walk begins with an old hermit scavenging through the woods for electrical parts in a dystopian future where skimplemented chips are considered antiquated. After he turns in what he finds—a few disemboweled electrical cords—for a few credits, he returns to his two-story hut and checks on a woman that is lying on the floor of a bedroom he sometimes keeps locked. She is bleeding one moment, then fine the next. In between he returns to a glass cabinet to gaze at family artifacts then travels the road again in search of antiquated treasures.

Along the way, we meet a boy who knows where a corpse is half buried in a woods and reanimates as a mute vagabond and follows him around. The hermit joins the boy and admits that he can see the woman as well, but nobody else can.

It turns out that the old man serves as a sort of medium to connect with the spirits of the netherworld and is paid for his services but rather detests the process and provides succinct information for those who pay him good money for even a sliver of information.

From here the boys' mother gets sick and the hermit attempts to guide and console the boy after she ultimately succumbs to her illness. The woman inside the locked room approaches him as a customer at one point, then alternates back to lying in the room until she stabs the hermit when he attempts to check on her.

With blood oozing from his wound, he watches as his hut burns down.

Now, you can take from this what you like and I know that I am chopping out entire bits that the director herself would be castigating me for, but it has been well over a month now and I distinctly recall having to rewind several parts to ensure I didn't miss something because one scene would evolve into another that didn't connect. But to the best of my recollection, this was the bulk of the film's plot.

In as best of a shot as I can give, I believe the old man to be serving a form of purgatory sentence at the hut where he is forced to observe the outside world and support himself by meager measures until he can ultimately learn to accept the sins of his past for what they were, and learn to accept God's forgiveness for what he has done. His persistent return to the glass shelf felt to me as if—through the collection of trinkets and other family heirlooms—it was his dying hope for a resurrection of a previous love, or a portion of his life that he needs to let go of. His pessimism with the world felt like a hatred of the self for misdeeds of the past, and his willingness to help the boy and other people serves to prove that he does possess a good heart, he just needs to realize this and let himself become free from his self imposed prison sentence. When he unlocks the door and doesn't react with retribution when he is stabbed by the woman and watches as his hut burns to the ground, this after seeing the glass case shattered, I feel as if it is his epilogue to a life largely lived with guilt over something he did in the past that he confesses to God.

I think the woman in the room was a family member of his, or a wife, that either left him or he killed out of a moment of fury and her being held residence at the hut represents the guilt he holds onto.

I could be way off on all of this, or I could be spot on. I doubt I will ever know.

Searching online, there isn't much to be found on this movie, and if this review ever comes across Mattie's eyes, perhaps, someday, she could grant me the courtesy of letting me know how close I was.

Some films like Eraserhead, Buffalo '66, Possession, The Babadook, and Y Tu Mama Tambien are not meant to be deciphered and remain just fine in the collective conscious as personally significant metaphors that remain special to the viewer.

Others twist themselves into such ambiguously convulsive states that it isn't even worth the effort to figure out the plot because I just didn't give a fuck about it nor cared for the director's attempt to Dylanize me with their over-the-top allegorical bullshit. I.e. Hereditary, Fire Walk With Me, Inherent Vice, Mother!, Under The Silver Lake.

I'd like to think that The Long Walk resides somewhere in the neighborhood of the former, rather than the latter, but then again, I don't find within myself the urge to go back for round two of decipherama.

So, for now, here's an "on hold" consensus.

Stars: **1/2

Verdict: Pass

Cousins: Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, The Deer Hunter, The Sixth Sense, Blade Runner