Posted: 03/27/2005

Off the Map

(2005)

by William Furlong

Off the Map is one of those early spring treasures of film that sneak nearly unnoticed into theaters for a few short weeks before tip-toeing back out again. Perhaps the film would have been better off premiering just a few months later, in the midst of all those big, noisy, summertime event flicks, when it would be appreciated a bit more. It’s like an antidote to Hollywood excess. A fight scene erupts, but not out of violence. There’s nudity, but no sex. Guns are fired, but not at people. There’s a car chase, sort of, but without screeching tires and a bass-pounding soundtrack. This is the kind of film that makes Jerry Bruckheimer shake his head in utter confusion, or perhaps hiss and recoil back into the shadows.

Directed by Campbell Scott (The Secret Lives of Dentists, The Spanish Prisoner) and adapted from her own stage play by Joan Ackerman, Off the Map is a quiet film in every respect. It’s quiet in its subject matter, the story of a family living in the wilds of New Mexico during “the summer of my father’s depression.” The narrator is Bo Groden (Valentina de Angelis), a twelve-year-old girl unlike any I’ve ever seen on screen. She’s precocious to the extreme, telling her mother she’s “terribly vexed,” writing carefully worded letters to snack food companies to receive free treats, obtaining her own Mastercharge card through the mail despite the lack of a social security number or bank account. She hunts squirrels for dinner with a bow and arrow and plots to leave this quiet countryside for a more modern locale, someplace with plumbing and electricity.

Her father, Charley Groden (Sam Elliott—The Contender, Tombstone, The Big Lebowski) is indeed depressed, nearly to the point of inaction. He sits at the table, he sits in the family truck, he drinks water and he cries, Lord, how he cries. His wife, Arlene, (Joan Allen—The Upside of Anger, The Contender, When The Sky Falls) takes it all in stride. Scrounging the dump for potential treasures, gardening nude, reading to the family by candlelight, she tries to give her husband the time and space he needs to conquer whatever has gotten him so down.

George (J.K. Simmons—Spider-man, TV’s Law & Order) stops by now and then, Charley’s best friend, sweet but not too quick. He stares at Charley in dumb fascination, shocked and curious that this man he looks up to and adores has been so thoroughly broken. When William Gibbs (Jim True-Frost—HBO’s The Wire) arrives to audit the family taxes, he’s immediately stung both by a bee and by the image of Arlene standing nude in the garden. After three days of fever induced tossing and turning on the couch, William announces that he’s in love with Arlene. She responds by thanking him and inviting him to stay until he feels better.

The film is quiet in every one of these performances. There was a real possibility of making these characters too bizarre in their eccentricities, of crossing into the lunacy of a Tom Robbins novel, but they’re all played exactly right. To compare the loving, loyal George to J.K. Simmons’ loud, mugging J. Jonah Jameson from the Spider-man films is like comparing, well, Off the Map to Spiderman. Sam Elliott gives a nearly silent performance, his deep, gravely voice all the more resonant when he uses it sparingly. His pleading, “don’t let me go, George” after he goads his best friend into wrestling him to the ground is simply heart-breaking. Jim True-Frost plays William Gibson as a perpetually lost soul. He tells Charley, “I’ve never not been depressed” and even during his life-changing stay with the Grodens, he seems to be waiting for something horrible to happen. Joan Allen gives another effortless performance, making acting look criminally easy. Her Arlene could be the free-spirited, hippy sister of The Upside of Anger’s Terry Wolfmeyer. She’s a mother who loves her extended family and understands each of them more than they know.

The true star here is de Angelis. Her Bo is such an original and true creation. She never goes too far, never ventures into dangerous sitcom territory where the children are far smarter than the parents. She is a smart kid, but a kid nonetheless, and when she throws a temper tantrum in disappointed anger, it feels exactly right. The film is largely about Bo’s relationships with the three men in her life and how she takes care of them in her own unique way. As they each become unavailable to her, Bo begins the long walk towards adulthood. She steals the film, but Elliott and Allen are skilled enough to let her get away clean.

The film is also “quiet” in the way it was shot. Ignoring years of sound effects shorthand, Campbell Scott isn’t afraid to allow true silence to work for the movie. There are nighttime exterior shots that don’t feature crickets chirping. There are interior shots of the empty Groden house that don’t feature creaking boards. There are shots of coyotes and soaring eagles that don’t feature Native American drums and flutes. Scott’s camera captures simple pleasure in the wide, open stretches of the New Mexico countryside and much like the screenplay, finds beauty in those empty spaces. His long, hanging fades from scene to scene mirror the dreamlike quality of glowing childhood summers that seemed to last forever.

The film is book-ended with scenes of Bo all grown up (played by Amy Brenneman). In Ackerman’s play, the adult Bo is onstage throughout the production, commenting on her memories of that long summer. I think I would have preferred it if there were no mention of Bo as an adult in the film. I’d rather remember the story as she might, an isolated fairy tale that never had to end. Again, the film is quiet in the way it was released. Off the Map debuted at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, and it’s almost certainly been a struggle for Campbell Scott to get it released at all. With a small production budget and an equally small promotional budget, this is a movie that will thrive on word of mouth. Seek it out, enjoy it, and pass it on.

William Furlong is a writer living in Manhattan.

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