Joshua Burge plays the role of angry young slacker, Marty Jackitansky, in Indie film-maker Joel Potrykus’ second feature film “Buzzard” (2014). He is thought of as Polish but he’s White Russian. He is tall, skinny, has large eyes, soft mouth and sleek cheekbones. His emotional stillness is as cartoonishly handsome as Buster Keaton’s facial features. When we first meet Burge as Jackitansky, his emotionless face is in the middle of the frame, thinking that he is five steps ahead of people in the system. What Jackitansky does next is hilarious, although it doesn’t make us like him. Marty closes his $250 checking account at the bank, and immediately asks the staff to open a new checking account for the sole purpose of luring in $50 advantage the bank offers. Marty’s relative joyless existence is punctuated by such little scams, where the aim is to just show the middle finger to ‘The Man’. But, Marty isn’t a subtext-armored ‘Tyler Durden’ to be an intelligent scammer; he is just so caught up with his own sense of awesomeness that he is unaware of things reaching a nightmarish, threshold point.
“Buzzard” may delight some and disappoint a lot. Its
minimalist depiction of middle-class, affixed to the middle part of America, or
its unconventional take on slacker sub-genre might make a few to see it with a
appreciative glance, but even them could be averted by the increasingly
volatile down-ward spiral of Marty. It is funny, but not a comedy. It is about
a paranoid, unethical young man, but this guy doesn’t provide rhetoric
statements to make the viewers understand his actions. “Buzzard” is simply a
character study about a man, who is hard to like, but also harder to dismiss.
Despite all his embittered and intimidating looks, there is a vulnerability to
Marty Jackitansky that kept me observing him, even when he crams up spaghetti
& meatballs (food spilling onto a hotel bath-robe) or when he relentlessly
unloads abuse on friend/co-worker Derek.
Marty is forced to be on the fringes of a cubicle culture.
He is a permanent temp at Mortgage Company, earning $9.50 an hour. Unlike his work
buddy Derek (Potrykus), Marty isn’t interested in waiting to be a permanent
employee with full work benefits. He may know that such permanence is impossible in
the crisis-ridden middle-class society of America. So, he takes three-hour breaks, doesn’t
care about being the ‘employee of month’ and works to develop his small
criminal enterprise. In the opening scene, he rips off $50 from his own mortgage
firm and then we see Marty ordering up unnecessary office supplies, only to
sell it back at the store for refunds. All these nickel-and-dime hustling by
Marty isn’t also used in drinks or drugs. He is just maintaining his collection
of comics and death-metal music. His drab room is decorated with horror or
exploitation film posters (from “Wicker Man” to “Leviathan”) and he is prideful
about his Nintendo-glove re-designed to be a Freddy Kreuger metal blade
finger-tips.
The straight-faced conviction and relentless pursuit of
little scams by Jackitansky reminds us of Robert Bresson’s doomed con-man in “Pickpocket”
(1959). We know what would happen, when the firm’s manager places a pile of
undelivered checks on Marty’s desk. But, he is so joyous that he had figured
out something so imaginative to cheat the intended recipients of returned tax
refunds. The dubious scheme is quickly discovered, and a panicked Marty
literally backs off to a basement (Derek’s dwelling, also known as ‘The Party
Zone’). When he clumsily lies to his mother “I don’t ever act like that
anymore. I’m happy now. Everyone likes me”, we can’t help but feel a little for
him. Marty’s paranoia then makes him to run off to the bedraggled, economically distressed streets of Detroit.
Like the bird of prey in the movie’s title, the protagonist
preys upon smaller beings, placed at societal rungs. Director Potrykus keeps his shots closer to Joshua’s
face, when the scams are successful. Gradually, as Marty’s methods are found
out or even when he himself is scammed upon, the frames take in the
surroundings, indicating the threshold for humiliation. When Marty’s paranoia
and nervousness upsurges the camera frames too get a little shakier and the
cuts become more jarring and sudden. Portykus’ characterization of the
protagonist could be deemed as morally empty or simply as sociopath, but I
think that there’s enough hints to view Marty as a youngster trying to get by
with little money. He uses promotional codes for phones; he has free coupons
for ‘Hot Pockets’; he picks up egg-sandwiches from the trash can to swindle for
a new one; after a real injury at home, he fakes one at office to gain worker’s
compensation (since there are no health insurance for temps). These little
moments works as a commentary about the society Marty lives in, where his
hilariously pathetic scams and Travis Bickle like downfall seems to have a
meaning. But, Potrykus never makes such moments didactic to serve the single
purpose of socioeconomic criticism.
Joshua Burge imbues enough compassion into the odious
characteristics of Marty to keep it engaging. We know that Marty’s
self-destruction is inevitable and even pointless, but nothing comes off as
false due to stoic performance of Joshua. As balding, ordinary, homo-phobic Derek,
Potrykus steals all the scenes he is in. Derek’s failure to accomplish his
dream of designing a ‘Party Zone’ looks both farcical as well as relatable. The
most compelling sequences in “Buzzard” comes toward the ending, where ‘Chekhov’s
gun’ principle is fulfilled and Marty runs with heavy metal music on
head-phones (a shot-to-shot homage to Leos Carax’ “Mauvais sang” aka “Bad Blood”
(1986); source: IMDb trivia page). The joy of escape could be seen, but the
camera gradually fixes its gaze on Marty’s arms & legs, indicating that
there isn’t going to be change, although the background rapidly changes in
those moments. Eventually, he stands in front of a store’s video screen like a
cornered prey. Did ‘reality’ catch-up with Marty in that final, contemplative
frame? Or did his delusions transcend the stages of ‘reality’? Whatever it is,
it was interesting and compelling to watch this guy .
“Buzzard” (97 minutes) is an atrocious and raw, yet
bewitching character study of a dispirited slacker. The minimalist indie
stagings plus the calm, introspective quality may not satisfy those expecting a
funny, roller-coaster ride.
Trailer
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