Smithereens Blu-ray Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov, July 29, 2018



Everything will be different in LA

The soundness of this statement will never age, ever. Regardless of the ways in which a society evolves, one's life is always defined by just a few crucial choices and the type of interactions that one engages in because of them. How well one manages the latter then determines the quality of one's life. This is essentially the secret behindSusan Seidelman's directorial debut is set in New York City during that very specific moment when the punk movement started dying and the majority of its 'true believers' were gradually flushed out. Its main character, Wren (Susan Berman), is a young girl who not only does not yet recognize the irreversible trend, but is actually convinced that the big and liberating punk wave is still rising. It is why she does not have the patience to focus on relationships that may require her to change the way she lives her life -- if anyone, including her old friends, even casually suggests that she commits to anything that might disrupt her journey, she instantly walks away.But one day she bumps into Paul (Brad Rijn), who is handsome, kind, and just the right guy that a girl would want to fall in love with, and the two spend some time together. Wren even visits his funky van with which he made the trip from Montana after he decided that an aspiring artist like him ought to try his luck in the Big Apple. The two quickly realize that there is some genuine chemistry between them, but as soon as Paul tries to convinced Wren to end her journey and begin a new one with him she abandons him. Around the same time Wren also meets Eric (Richard Hell), an egoistic 'star' who is convinced that it is only a matter of time before a studio scout recognizes his talent and then offers him a pile of cash to sign a record deal. Wren then allows him to convince her that she would make a perfect manager, and while she plans to move to LA with him gets thrown out of her apartment. For a short period of time she attempts to use the people that she knows like her idol Eric does his 'friends', but very quickly comes to realize that while being on her journey she has alienated all of them and they no longer care about her.has a good number of very funny moments, but it actually uses the awakening of its star to highlight how a ruthless socio-economic grinder basically transformed the punk idealists into permanent social outcasts. In the final phase of this transformation many of these people lost their lives because they either could not make the necessary adjustment to survive, or simply did not think that the recovery was worth the effort. This truly was a very, very sad cycle.The ugly from the final phase is avoided, but on the other hand there are no attempts to glamorize the inevitable either. (And this is the exact opposite of what occurs in Alex Cox's classic punk drama Sid & Nancy ). Seidelman gives Wren plenty of time to deal with her misery and when at the end she finally grasps the exact nature of her reality walks away from her. In other words, the film's primary focus is on the destruction of Wren's idealism, not on her actual journey and physical self-destruction.The leads are good, but some of the supporting actors are definitely overplaying their characters. The seemingly perpetually horny guy that tries hard to convince Wren's girlfriend to have a hot bubble bath with him is especially unconvincing.The original soundtrack features a few very cool tracks from The Feelies: "The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness", "The Loveless Love", and "Original Love".