SXSW 2020 - Arkansas

SXSW/LIONSGATE

Clark Duke’s directorial debut Arkansas is an engaging and well-crafted feature with a decent screenplay, strong performances from a stellar cast list and a wonderfully effective and vibrant score from The Flaming Lips and Devandra Banhart.

Duke has a whole host of heavyweight talent at his disposal – ranging from the likes of Vince Vaughn, John Malkovich, Vivica A. Fox and Michael Kenneth Williams – and the first time director succeeds in managing to restrain using them as headliners and instead layers each performance in smaller integral pieces of a larger ensemble. By doing so, Duke creates gravitas for his feature in bloated cameos but allows himself, Eden Brolin and Liam Hemsworth to take centre stage and showcase their respective talents.

Out of the more well-known cast list and the central trio, it is Vaughn who takes up much of the screentime in a wonderfully stoic and enigmatic performance. A character with terrific screen presence and commanding of the frame with a subtle quaintness. Hemsworth is equally as good, in arguably his strongest role to date as hothead Kyle. A character that, for the most part, is slightly a little too much framed as one-note but one that is compelling and emotive nonetheless. 

Duke and Brolin as Swim and Johanna have an incredibly rich and thematically compelling arc, but Duke and co-writer Andrew Boonkrong can not quite find time to examine and explore this narrative to a fulfilling and captivating degree. Brolin, while wonderful, is in desperate need for her character to have a brutally emotive scene to bring gravitas to the feature and showcase her talents in one simple but effective monologue. Yet, the screenplay, unfortunately, fails to hit that height.

Duke's film also does not liven up proceedings visually from cinematographer Steven Meizler, who, along with Duke, uses an extraordinary amount of close-ups and static shots with a lack of movement and momentum. A sentiment that does not liven up the atmosphere of the script or craft tension. That being said, aforementioned above, the score courtesy of The Flaming Lips and Devandra Banhart is tremendously engaging in crafting a sense of calm and purity, only for the film to dramatically juxtapose these emotions with unsettling and questionable acts of on-screen violence

ARKANSAS will be available on On Apple, Amazon, On Demand Platforms, Blu-ray and DVD on May 5, 2020.