Mark Christopher | Heartland / 2007

lucky strike

by Douglas Messerli

 

Mark Christopher (screenwriter and director) Heartland / 2007 [12 minutes]

 

Heartland moves in a pattern that stands at the opposite end from Silver Road. HG Gudmanson (Corey Sorenson) is a cultural anthropological student at Columbia University and having “the time of his life.” Indeed, the opening credits show him partying in what appears to be several rather wild sex parties in New York City with a “kid in glasses” named Martin who the narrator describes as some kind of Kennedy—which kind he hasn’t told me because I wouldn’t believe it, just as I haven’t told him where I’m from either “because he wouldn’t believe it.” He reports, however, that his father was having business problems so he took weeks off and returned to another world.

 

    Throughout this short movie, in fact, Martin talks about himself and the events surrounding him in the voice of HG Gudmanson, the cultural anthropologist, objectifying his own being as if somehow he wasn’t involved in the events he is narrating.

     That other world, it turns out, is Goldfield, Iowa, where he grew up on farm homesteaded by his great-great grandfather, a fact that his father, Thor Gudmanson (Martin Naftal) will never let him forget.

     Almost immediately we meet the hired hand, Kevin McGonagle (Tyler Tooley), who, as HG tells us, was “kinda white trash from town. My dad hired out of pity though. McGonagle was minus two parents plus a bunch of little siblings. Don and I used to joke that the littlest one was his own kid. “He must of hooked up with a hundred girls since junior high.” At least we know that the now citified HG hasn’t lost his small-town gossipy meanness.

      It turns out that HG’s father is an alcoholic, and when the next morning he doesn’t show up for chores, the two boys talk a little about town affairs. The only one from school who HG evidently keeps in touch is a girl named Dawn, with whom evidently Kevin has now hooked up. He asks HG whether he minds. Kevin’s own friends think he’s a loser for working on the farm, but he’s still proud that he’s taking care of his family. The boys take off their shirts before they get to work in the hot sun, both taking furtive looks at one another’s physique.

      Kevin tells us briefly about his high school sweetheart Dawn Olson (Taylor Gwinn), whom he describes in terms of an utter contradiction, an intelligent evangelical. They went out, last night, to the local bar Mary’s where he had a beer and she a coke; he had another beer and she another coke. The dating game came up, and he came out to her, he tells us, but she did not take it well. “In fact, she screamed, ‘You can’t be gay!’” And we know now that soon the whole town will be talking.

      HG’s narrative returns for a moment to Martin. “When Martin came out he was 11. In fact, his mother made him a party. ...He cannot understand this strange tribe I come from.”

      Meanwhile, the narrator’s worst fears come true as the whole talk is talking about him, and his father has grabbed and bottle of whisky and retired to bed. “That was three days ago.” The last time he did it was after his mother left; “it lasted a year, and we almost went broke.” Tyler assures him that at least he will be there.

       Working hard, he reads the finances again and again without, as he tells Kevin, seeing “a way out.” Kevin answers rather profoundly, “Maybe that’s the problem.” “What?” “Maybe it’s about finding a way into it.”

        HD asks Tyler how it feels to take care of his family, the latter asking, “who was that Greek guy pushing that rock up the hill?” “Sisyphus?” “It always feels like the rock I’m pushing is gonna win.”

        He then turns and asks the question that our so-called hero has not wanted to hear: “What are you gonna do if he doesn’t get out of bed?”

       There is no answer, and its apparent that HD has been visiting home now for more than two weeks. Kevin’s brother is arrested for driving a car across a football field—during a game, HD’s voice tells us. And his father is still in bed. So he has missed his bus to the airport and his long trip home to New York.

      Sexually frustrated, HG finally visits the Lucky Strike, “the middle of nowhere in the middle of nowhere,” what appears to be an empty road where he waits in his car in the dark, strumming a song about going home, by which he obviously means New York City.

      He cites a report by cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead about a tribe where every spring the adolescent boys who have come of age are asked to make a sacrifice for the survival of the tribe. “Last night I accepted the fact that I was a member of that tribe.”

       “So, here I am,” he reports, “at the Lucky Strike.” And time, delayed after the earlier scene, picks up once more to where the film left off, in the middle of nowhere. There he meets Kevin, who joins him in his automobile, the two discussing their predicaments, Kevin afraid that social services may take his brothers and sisters away from him. For the first time HD offers his help, suggesting that if Kevin needs anything, he’s there for him.

        Kevin, taking a swig, makes a jump into what we now recognize is a possible future. “It’s not so bad here. When you got friends.” HD looks at him with a wide smile. They toast with their beer bottles.

     Slowly they gaze at each other, unsure, terrified, but suddenly moving toward one another embracing in a in a deep kiss. We can now be certain that they will be there for one another in more ways than just putting in hard hours on feeding the cattle, plowing the land, and harvesting the corn and hay.

 

Los Angeles, September 3, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2021).