DVD review: Manhattan, Kansas

by John P. Meyer

Carnivalesque Films releases the DVD of Manhattan, Kansas today (Nov. 18). You can see the trailer and purchase a copy here.

Carnivalesque - as those who have attended the past two AFI Dallas Film Fests are probably aware - is run by the team of David Redmon, a native of Mansfield, TX, and his partner Ashley Sabin. Their previous releases of interest include Kamp Katrina and Intimidad, both of which have done very well on the film festival circuit.

Manhattan, Kansas is a harrowing and often uncomfortably personal documentary about the relationship between the filmmaker, Tara Wray, and her mother, Evie, who lived as if joined at the hip during Tara's formative years. As Tara puts it, "I couldn't tell where my mother ended and I began."

Which would be difficult enough for any college-bound young woman to deal with. But couple this unhealthy attachment with the fact that her mom is (and ever has been) chronically jobless, manic-depressive and borderline(?) psychotic, and you've got a recipe for potential disaster.

Which explains why, after her mother threatened to drive them both off a cliff into Tuttle Creek Reservoir, Tara opted for a study-abroad program in Finland. And ended up after that in the "real" Manhattan, where she gained employment at NYU.

Deciding to produce her first film, Tara could think of no more appropriate subject matter than her mother. So - for the first time in five years - she prepares to return to the vast open plains of Kansas armed with "a camera, two filmmakers and a therapist." All of which she will end up needing before the project is completed.

At the time of her return, Tara's mom, Evie, found herself living in a "retreat house" owned by a religious cult (the Messengers of Peace) in the tiny crossroads burg of Hunter. Wielding a camera like some kind of emotional buffer, Tara exits the rental car to renew her acquaintance with her mother, not knowing exactly what to expect.

It's hard to say exactly what effect the presence of the camera (and the camera guy) has on Evie's behavior (she rambles on about Saddam Hussein emerging from his hole in the ground only two days after she moved into the retreat house), but it will be seen to have little discernible effect on the gut-wrenching love/hate emotions that have been bottled up for years in Tara. She lets everything out, though most spectacularly only when removed from her mother's direct presence.

There are flashback sequences artfully rendered in grainy black and white, along with glimpses of Tara's childhood told through home movies cued up by her grandparents. Oddly, the adolescent Tara was frequently clothed (and coiffed) to resemble a boy - an affectation that adds another element of surrealism to an already abundantly bizarre true-life narrative.

Tara also makes the late acquaintance of her absentee father, who she discovers living in her newly-adopted home city of New York. In an on-camera interview conducted by his daughter, this worthy bohemian admits that being a father was "the last thing" he could have done back when Evie told him she was pregnant. What a prince.

Underpinning the various backstory elements is Evie's stated intention of making her way to the geodetic center of the U.S. - it's the reason she moved from Manhattan to Hunter, certain that she will find some kind of enlightenment by fulfilling this quest. But until Tara's arrival on the scene, Evie has made no effort to actually find the place, instead spending her time playing with the household kitten, prying up boards in the shed looking for lost treasure and working on her art.

In a stunning display of truth being, in fact, stranger than any conceivable fiction, we find that Evie's quest for the geodetic center actually ends up bearing fruit - of an entirely unexpected variety.