Far From Home: The Adventures of Yellow Dog (1995)

One of the things I dislike about my present situation is that if I see a film I want to write about, I know it will usually take a week or two to get the free time to do so. I suppose I should be glad that I get anything writ at all, but it's annoying in a case like this--where the film won't be around much longer, and where people don't seem to recognize its central value.

The reviews I've heard have been in the faint-praise department: FAR FROM HOME is supposedly a nice little flick, one where you can wait till it comes out on video. The problem is that people who would like FAR FROM HOME may lose a lot on the small screen--and maybe never notice what they're missing.

"Little" films frequently translate well to the small screen. In a circumscribed medium, a circumscribed universe can draw us in. And yes, in some sense, this might be called a "little" film. But "quiet" is more accurate. As far as characters go, there's only a handful of speaking roles. There are four family members, a walk-on or two, and only two non-family-members of any significance.

But the setting of FAR FROM HOME and the challenges faced are as essential as the precision of its focus. And the setting is large. Angus (Jesse Bradford), his parents (Bruce Davison and Mimi Rogers), and his kid brother, Silas, live in a farmhouse somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. The woods come up to open fields around the house. The scenery is of wildness and countryside. It's consistently splendid, by the way. The wilderness is a co-star of sorts.

And we all know there is going to be an adventure in the deep woods. The trailers, the posters, the promos all announce it. Words like "contemplative" or "atmospheric" *don't* leap out at us--maybe not even after seeing the film.

But if you're looking for "adventure" in the standard sense, this ain't it. You won't get one tidy obstacle followed by another--where each challenge is a real or potential turning point for the plot, all leading to a climactic struggle. Also, you won't get character development--where the obstacle or struggle forces some change on the hero or those around him.

Someone with better writing background than I have will have to fill in the terms, but there are two different kinds of "action" at issue here. One is an action or event that determines a story line: change such a "pivot point" or "breakpoint", and we'd have a different story. The other kind of action is just action: doing what's necessary to work out the consequences of the pivotal action or event.

As far as pivot points, there are only really two: kid and dog get together; kid and dog get washed up on wilderness shore. Then everything works forward with how they and everyone else deal with it.

Before Angus and Yellow Dog find one another, the action is minutiae: Angus leads his kid brother and a friend of his brother on a race through the woods trying to catch a rabbit. After Angus and Yellow Dog meet, the action is still more action that advances the action without changing it much. Yellow Dog messes things up; Yellow Dog gets Mom to like him. The boat trip and storm are the most condensed pivotal actions, and even they are predominantly minutiae: Angus getting coffee for Dad, Yellow Dog sliding on tilting deck. Afterwards, almost everything is minutiae--only it's life-or-death minutiae.

Hmm... If "action" means only pivotal action to you, have I made this sound dull enough?! Are you thinking maybe the characters must have been colorful enough to command my involvement?

Well, if you're thinking of histrionics, forget it.

If nothing "happens", it should also be noted that no one "does" anything. No one grabs control and drives the story down a new path. No one rebels; even when someone takes an action that may complicate things, it's because it was the sensible thing to do at the time.

Moreover, we don't get speeches. These are not people who explain themselves. No soul-searching, no traumatic self-disclosure, no railing at fate, no "emoting" at all. Only occasionally (in the woods scenes) is there a voice over, where we hear what Angus is thinking so we can understand why he takes a course of action. And then it's just the sort of thing he might have said aloud if they were other people around--the same sort of thing he's also said aloud to Yellow Dog.

Angus and his family hold the perfectly ordinary conversations that ordinary people hold. These are just nice people I would more likely expect to meet than to see in a movie. Watching the beginning, my first question was whether this was based on a real-life story, where they kept pretty close to a book or something that one of the participants had written.

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So, we have a movie where nothing happens, where nothing is done, and nothing is said. This is a movie?

In fact, the film is continually active and looks on the surface reasonably North American. The scenes change, there's activity going on all the time. In the second sense of action--working out what happens after a breakpoint--FAR FROM HOME is *all* action. It never drags; it never wastes time.

But there's almost something more like some Japanese and Swedish films. Everything is communicated by implication, by indirection. Particularly with Angus, again and again we simply see his face as he surveys a situation. No dialogue, no attempt to stretch for dramatic facial expression; he's just thinking, sizing things up. Then he will move. And almost invariably, we will know why without being "told".

In fact, writer/director Phillip Borsos seems very deliberately to want us never to have the usual expostulations. In one scene with the parents, when the search seems to be going nowhere, the mother walks to the bathroom; as she opens the door, we see the father and it's evident he's been crying. Both of then abruptly change. It's as if the door has been slammed shut again. They both know what's going on, they don't deny it. They hold each other for a moment, and talk about what to do. But any emoting takes place off screen; we are not meant to see it or hear it.

In fact, I'd like to have the time to look at the role of the most silent character of all--Yellow Dog. He is, in some sense, the most pivotal character of all, next to nature, the wilderness. But this review will be late enough (and long enough!), as it is. Suffice it to say, his presence in the plot should underscore any ideas about the quietness of the speaking roles.

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Thinking particularly of the repeated camera shots of Angus sizing things up, I'm reminded that a number of foreign directors have been fascinated with the traditional American western. At first, joining the two stereotypes seems unlikely--the western, presumably all action and shoot-em-up; the foreign "art" film, all atmosphere and implication.

But the hero, the "strong, silent type", is an intersection of the two. Sizing things up is something he does all the time. Apparently he's impassive, unemotional, but *we* the audience write in the emotions, the color and tone taking place behind the face. *We* measure the possible costs of his decision; *we* ponder what implications something will have for the future.

We base our judgements on shared myths and expectations about the hero and his role; but we also bring our personal twist to it. In some sense, the relatively expressionless face contains *all* the emotions; *we* choose which one(s) to select out for this scene or that event. The viewer of an action film can be doing as much interpretation as the viewer of any apparently obscure art film. In the western, the interpretation may be more instinctive and less conscious, but it's interpretation nonetheless. The two types of film differ in the kind of action on screen; they're similar in the kind of viewer involvement.

So it is with Angus and FAR FROM HOME. Take the rabbit chase in the first few minutes of the film. Note: Hunting a rabbit on the *run*?! With a slingshot?! In second growth?! That's not a game one is apt to win. What does it say about someone willing to play it? And to take his kid brother and friend along as a learning experience?

Here, though, the rabbit finally freezes; Angus has a free shot. Thoughtful, he aims at the rabbit. Nothing is said, but *we* know why he acts the way he does. Further, we know what he doesn't--that the context of his decisions about such things is going to change radically. That's what the ads and the previews and the posters have told us. That's why we're here; that's what we're here to see.

Angus in some sense, has done nothing, taken no decisions that affect the plot. *We* have done a lot, all in the space of a few minutes. We've gotten to know a fair amount about this kid; we've gotten the opportunity to put his present state in the context of what we know lies ahead for him. And the most important points on screen have been wordless and expressionless. If we've gone down any blind paths in our interpretation, we can blame only ourselves, not the characters.

Practically everything in FAR FROM HOME will be like that.

The question, then, is do we want to spend the time inside the world of Angus and his family?

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I'm afraid we now live in a world where the popular image is that an unexpressed emotion is a lie. You're not truly sad or cheerful or whatnot unless you ram it down the throat of everyone within attacking distance. Everything must be explained to people; they in turn, must reflect it all back or suffer having it explained and analyzed still further.

     That is *not* the world of Angus and his family.

In some respects, they remind me of the way I've described my family and town: Where I come from, the men don't wear jewelry; then again, where I come from, the women don't wear jewelry, either.

I don't think the parents ever verbally state anything about their love for each other or the two kids; but everything they do, and how they do it, does. They sound "modern" and middle-class in their ways of discussing whether Angus can keep Yellow Dog, but they evoke images going back to farm families and poor people in small towns. In fact, I had one small problem in dealing with Davison and Rogers. All the images I have of such parents involve either older people, or people apparently somewhat poor. (Instinctively, I guess I expect Aunty Em!)

Angus's father and mother just seemed a tad young and sophisticated. (Am I the only one who always felt his parents to be so old?!)

The kid brother, Silas, however, gave me no such problem. He walks just this side of the line between seven-year-old and continual irritation. (To the extent there's a difference!) He may run around in a rain coat/cape playing super hero, but he knows when to cool it.

The important thing, though, is that many 14-year-olds would find any seven-year-old a major pain; he'd be their cross to bear. Well, Silas's not a pain, and Angus just lets him trot along. Silas doesn't tell us so much about himself as about *Angus*.

And Bradford brings off his role as Angus effortlessly. I am no expert on acting; and as I've said, the style of film demands that we the audience write much into the action. Having said that, I have to say that Bradford makes it easy to write an enormous range of emotions into Angus. Bradford projects Angus as sensible and good-humored before the woods, as level-headed and resourceful once in the crunch. He gives us a tenacity that is not a matter of big emotional drive so much as that giving up or breaking down is simply not part of his character.

I should also note that Bradford does well on the subtler shadings. (True, it's a film that is *all* subtle shadings.) The particular subtler shading I'm thinking of forces me to warn you that yes, the filmmakers have condescended to the demand for lust and the gratuitous sex scene!

FAR FROM HOME has its own *vamp*! Sultry! Sophisticated! Seductive! Exerting all her feminine wiles to snare the innocent hero for her own!

     **Oh, all right, it's not *quite* that!**

As a charming aside to the main action, there's a girl from school who has a crush on Angus. The same age apparently, she also points up the fact that Angus may be far beyond his peers in resourcefulness and other virtues, but he still has some learning to do in other departments! FAR FROM HOME is *not* a "coming-of-age" flick! Her two brief scenes add an element of very quiet humor, and a reminder that the great wide world is waiting outside the boundaries of the woods.

As one of the only two significant non-family figures, she also acts as a counterpoint to the head of the search effort. On the surface, he seems almost cold--concerned about wind and fuel while Angus's parents are concerned about Angus.

But it's as if Borsos wanted to give a small message: even the apparently unsympathetic character is on our side. He's just normally businesslike and cool. Underneath, there is no question about his concern or commitment. In one scene, the words are important, as he reassures Angus's mother that he would never give up the search. But, as in a western, the words are brief and to the point. When a character like this does explain himself, he does so in terms of what he will *do*. That's enough.

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And is that economy of speech merely cinematic? In my own experience, it's something like what we'd see in real life. We interact with people in the course of work, chores, idle conversation and whatnot. We *infer* what's going on inside. This is still a dominant mode of conversation for many people. Depending on the context, a raised eyebrow can be the same as a guffaw or the same as a rebuke.

Perhaps it is better for feelings to be discussed explicitly--particularly when dealing with people from disparate backgrounds, or psychologically traumatic events. But people from the same family or background can do pretty well with things being implicit. Sentences don't have to be completed, points don't have to be spelled out. They're known.

Such a "language" can be used as a form of deceit, of denying unpleasant truths. But so can false openness. For Angus's family, the reliance on implicits and ordinary conversation is a language of love and truthfulness.

They communicate through action as much as--or even more than--words. At a point where the stereotypical western and the stereotypical art film overlap, their communication, their speech, is silent.

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So, does that family, that kid, and that world sound like something you would want to be part of? Something that you'd want to be acquainted with?

If it does, then you have to be part of it in the same way you're part of similar worlds in real-life. Most people don't verbally assign labels to themselves as to their personalities and attitudes. We see it in how they do things. (And even with those who do label themselves, we have to check the label against the actions.) We have to *look* at each other--and *carefully*.

For longer than I wish to think about, I've been living in Washington, D.C. And as Leadbelly sang years ago, it's a boozhwah town. I think I *like* the intelligentsia and others in the upper middle classes, but frankly, I don't share their experience. I understand them in the sense of being able to predict their behavior, and I pay the rent by analyzing and reporting and writing on things of interest to them. I am arguably *more* one of them than many! Still, they've never seemed very sane to me. Terms like "frivolous" and "self-absorbed" come to mind.

Unfortunately for me, their views are apparently more typical of "serious" filmgoers than mine are. I can see something that speaks to me in lots of films, but very few that seem really to describe my family and the people I grew up with.

FAR FROM HOME is one such film. These people in the Pacific Northwest don't seem as scruffy as the folks I recall from home. And they're really nice folks, which isn't true for everyone. But I don't consider that a weakness of the film. Decent, sane people are worth a film now and then, aren't they!?

Add to that, FAR FROM HOME puts a kid I might have known in a real adventure. Angus is a kid I would have *admired*. But *been*? Sorry. Therefore, I don't want to just "see" a film like this. I want to *get into* it.

If you think you agree, then try to see FAR FROM HOME on the big screen. If you have to see it on video, then do so deliberately. Disconnect the phone, commit yourself to sit there, just as you would in a theater. Block out the world, the endlessly psychoanalyzing commentaries, the exchange of monologues where people appear to interact but never reach touch one another.

FAR FROM HOME is *not* far from home, even though some of us may be. And like life, it's a life-or-death adventure.