The Color Wheel
Directed By: Alex
Ross Perry
Written By: Carlen
Altman and Alex Ross Perry
Starring: Carlen
Altman, Alex Ross Perry, Bob Byington, Ry Russo-Young, Roy Thomas, and C. Mason
Wells
Director of Photography: Sean Price Williams, Editor: Alex
Ross Perry
If one were
to just look at a description of The Color
Wheel on paper, one would expect the next film in the often unimaginative
mumblecore movement. The writer-director-actor, Alex Ross Perry has been linked
before with Joe Swanberg and Andrew Bujalski. C. Mason Wells co-worte and
starred in Swanberg’s LOL. Ry
Russo-Young is another one of the mumblecore filmmakers and has a small role
here. And the film’s plot involves a lot of dialogue about 20-somethings trying
to figure out their lives. But it only takes the first image of 16mm black and
white grain and the soul songs of the 1970s for The Color Wheel to transport us to a different world. We’re not in
Kansas anymore.
It’s not
that Perry’s film is completely stripped of any relation to the mumblecore
movement, but The Color Wheel has
much more on its mind, both visually and thematically, than those of his
filmmaking generation’s counterparts. Perry made a small if notable dent in
filmmaking with his first film, Impolex (Less
of an adaptation of Thomas Pychon’s Gravity’s
Rainbow than a parody of its cult status), but he launches himself into a
unique stratosphere of filmmakers to watch with this abrasive and uniquely bold
comedy about sibiling-hood.
