All Mistakes Buried

All Mistakes Buried

Every Mistake Buried is a thriller movie with a junkie who wants to improve his life after committing one of those mythic big heists. It is usually said that the power of storytelling in movies lies in the telling, and this film produced by director Tim McCann (“Desolation Angels”) is no exception. In any sense, there isn’t anything new about it. However, because it has been brought to life with such dedication and enthusiasm for the craft; therefore holding up far better than one might expect.

This film was shot in Louisiana while employing a soundtrack filled with buzzing cicadas and interstate traffic sounds which give an impression that this is all happening inside the head of its main character: Sonny (Sam Trammell from “True Blood”), once an affluent small businessman whose drug addiction ruined his career as well as wealth.

Currently residing at a dirty motel where he smokes crack whenever possible; also fixating on when things were good between himself, his loving wife Jen (Missy Yager) and their thriving home security company Sonny’s tale comprises numerous offenses that escalate over time starting with shoplifting birthday cards meant for giving them away later then hiding out until closing hours within pawnshops stealing (or reclaiming) necklaces intended for Jen before getting involved into some wild high risk crime towards end justifying everything this does under her name alone saying so much about wife but truly being concerned largely with Sonny i.e., his pridefulness, shame over losing greatly etcetera.

McCann co-wrote the screenplay alongside Shaun S. Sanghani based on a story by Trammell as well as himself; drawing heavily from 1940s noir films set amidst shadowy fringes located either next door or beneath polite society which are known to be murkier in terms of morality than anywhere else.

Here we find mostly addicts selling themselves short along avenues filled with pimps pushing drugs harder than any street pharmacist could ever dream off; rough madams (such as Vanessa Ferlito’s character also having some shared history with our protagonist) running tight ships while keeping their girls hungry for more cash; after hour motel managers looking to make quick buck or two before daylight breaks so they can go back home and sleep it all away until evening falls again; snarling club owners who believe everyone owes them something simply because they’ve somehow managed opening doors earlier than others each night etcetera.

These people tend not being very nice either: one glance wrongly directed towards them might result in your getting beaten within an inch of life if lucky.

Just similar to his previous movies, “All Mistakes Buried” seems like the result of a journalistic study or experience (vicarious, one hopes) another piece of evidence that Scuzzpit is just as much of a place as Main Street.

There’s none of that Hollywood crime movie nonsense: beautiful people with beautiful teeth and beautiful hair and fabulous clothes smoking on street corners and yelling at each other while carefully chosen pop and rap songs blare on the soundtrack. These characters feel real, so real you can smell their sour sweat and the stink of urine and spilled beer. (McCann has used actual ex-cons as actors in some of his other films, and I would not be surprised to learn he did the same thing here.)

But instead of telling its story in an old (or mainstream) film’s strictly linear way, “All Mistakes Buried” flashes back and forth through Sonny’s recent life in a prismatic fashion. The brilliant editing, by McCann and Chris Kursel, reminds me of arty 1960s and ’70s films that applied the techniques of literary fiction to pulp thriller material: “Point Blank” and its unofficial spiritual remake “The Limey” are particularly strong reference points here, especially when “All Mistakes Buried” leaves exposition behind altogether and goes fugue state hopping through past and present associations.

Some passages are so hauntingly lovely that they ennoble no, sanctify their sordid subject matter; it’s as if we were looking at Sonny’s predicament through the eyes of a compassionate deity that wishes it could do more for this poor man.

This technique becomes slightly irksome during Sonny’s second-half descent into chaos. The movie starts to fall apart or implode around him; it piles on flash-cuts and dissolves as if in sympathy with his growing mental distress. Certain images suggest the cover of a ’70s free-form rock album that you’d “loan” to a friend without expecting it back. It’s too much, or not modulated enough; there are times when the film itself seems out of control, not just Sonny. Still, it’s rare to see such an evidently low-budget film carrying itself with such aesthetic swagger. It might have cost a buck-fifty to make, but in its mind, the movie is as grand and careless as Sonny.

If there were Oscars for Best Performance in a Movie Academy Voters Wouldn’t Be Caught Dead Watching. I don’t know, we should probably just give one to Trammell anyway. His work here doesn’t just anchor the film; in many ways it is the film. Nearly every second of “All Mistakes Buried” is tethered to Sonny’s jittery, guilty, unrealistically hopeful consciousness so lively and imaginative that its baroque flourishes seem all of a piece (junkies aren’t known for their subtlety). Trammell has thought through every gesture; many of them are extreme (he also acted for McCann in “White Rabbit”).

Still, in some “massive” stage plays like those of Dennis Hopper or Jeremy Davies, everything that is extravagant stems from psychology; for instance Sonny’s reflective pause before he touches his own face or the way he appears to be laughing at or disgusted with himself as he curses and waves a gun around. What we are witnessing is a person severed from their core self a mind divorced from its body. Often there is an extremely short but easily perceptible delay between Sonny’s brain giving an instruction to his limbs and them carrying it out.

The momentary forever of this gap is occupied by an emotional blip: maybe self-consciousness, perhaps shame, conceivably wryness at the expense of what Sonny has turned into. No other time does this sense of deprivation come across as sharply than when speaking with non-addicts. He inflates himself, talks about how good things are going or what control he has over them now or all the progress that’s been made; the other person merely nods along until Sonny inevitably asks for money.

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