In The Motel Life, an adaptation of the Willy Vlautin novel, an intense brotherly love is the only thing keeping Frank and Jerry Lee (Emile Hirsch and Stephen Dorff, respectively) afloat amid a sea of deep-seeded problems. It’s as sad as it sounds, but co-directors Gabe and Alan Polsky infuse their murky dual character-study with dark, underlying beauty that creeps up on you and sticks to your bones.

Frank and Jerry Lee live the life of working-class drifters, living out of crummy hotels around Reno. If Reno is like Las Vegas’ mopey little brother, Jerry Lee is the walking embodiment of the “Biggest Little City in the World”; he’s an alcoholic, glum, disheveled guy with a hyperactive imagination and a kind heart. When he takes the life of a child in a hit-and-run accident, he hits the bottom of his life-long downward spiral. Frank needs to scrape together enough cash to get them out of town before the cops can sniff them out. “All I’ve ever done is fuck up,” Jerry Lee utters to Frank, in despair.

The brothers’ mother died when they were young, and their father abandoned them shortly thereafter. Their devotion to one another is touching, and their rare chemistry is more than fascinating enough to drive the film. With Jerry Lee’s self-esteem and self-worth so low, it’s up to Frank to keep his spirits lifted, which he does by telling engaging, fantastical stories about the brothers leading a more adventurous existence, expressed on screen with eye-catching hand-drawn animation. In a wonderful scene, Frank helps Jerry Lee–who lost a leg in a train accident–take a shower, joking about the size of their respective…ahem…”packages”…claiming Jerry Lee got the good genes. It’s a sorry state of affairs, bathing your one-legged brother in a run-down motel, but the these guys taught themselves to cope, so they find a way to share a chuckle.

Hirsch provides a rock-solid leading-man foundation for Dorff’s more striking, flourished performance. Dorff completely disappears into Jerry Lee, and this may be his finest role yet. He wears his pain and regret on his sullen face, though his repentance is so true and honorable it gives him an air of grace. Garnering our sympathy with this character is no easy feat as, let’s not forget, he’s a hit-and-run offender.

The Polskys and DP Roman Vasnayov (End of Watch) photograph the brothers’ broken lives through a lens that’s just as hazy and smudged as their uncertain futures. It’s winter time in the deserts of Reno, and the filmmakers compose beautiful shots in the snow-blanketed scenery; when Jerry Lee burns down his incriminating car in an empty plot following the accident, the soft orange glow of the flames look ethereal nestled in the serene, heavenly blue and white surroundings.

Aside from the handful of animated respites, the story feels one-note and a little dormant. We watch the brothers prop each other up as they wade through their sorry, mucked up lives, and then the film ends, with a sigh. Actually, the quiet final moments are quite poignant, but the road to get there is so consistently somber and cold that it all feels a bit flat. Dakota Fanning and Kris Kristofferson‘s side characters are well-acted, but add little complexity to the overly-simplistic narrative. The Motel Life feels a little too down-in-the-dumps for its own good at times, but sparks of energy supplied by Hirsch and Dorff illuminate an otherwise dreary film.

Two brothers, Frank and Jerry Lee Flannigan, are forced to live life on the run after Jerry Lee accidentally hits and kills a little boy while driving. With their lives slowly falling apart, the brothers must rely on and support each other through cold winter nights in the desert towns of Nevada, using their imagination to strengthen their intense brotherly bond.

The Motel Life, co-directors Gabe and Alan Polsky’s adaptation of Willy Vlautin’s debut novel, stars Emile Hirsch and Stephen Dorff as the brothers. Also starring Dakota Fanning and Kris Kristofferson.

Stephen Dorff and Gabe Polsky sat with us during the Mill Valley Film Festival to talk about why it took so long for the film to be released, how hard Stephen fought for the role of Jerry Lee, why digital cameras are irritating, the advantages of working with brother co-directors, and more.

The Motel Life opens this Friday, November 8th in New York, San Francisco and select cities.

How does it feel to be in the Bay Area, showing the film off at the Mill Valley Film Festival?
Stephen: It feels great to show the movie. We had a great response in Rome, but then we had this big gap in time.

That was last year, wasn’t it?
Stephen: Yeah, in November or December. Now, the cut is rocking and we’re ready to go, opening November 8th.

What’s been going on with the film in the last year?
Gabe: We’ve been planning our distribution, basically.

Stephen: We decided we didn’t want to release in the summer. This is a fall movie. This is a cold movie that should be up with the big movies in the awards run. It’s that kind of film and it’s gotten a good response so far.

Gabe: Leading up to the release, we’re utilizing all these festivals–Woodstock, Chicago, Philadelphia, etc.–just to generate and build a buzz.

Stephen: We’re like the underdog; we’re gonna go tear up the streets. Jerry Lee’s coming out in full force!

Stephen, how did you get involved with the film?
Stephen: I just read the script, man. As an actor, I get sent a lot of scripts. Somewhere had just opened, and it was kind of like my resurgence time, I guess. Sofia had given me such a great role in her fourth film. I was coming from a whirlwind European trip where the movie went down like gangbusters. We won pretty much everything and felt like the king of the world. I came back to a pile of scripts, and I was like, “Whoa, I’m cool again! They’re sending me scripts!”

I was reading these Hollywood scripts and I wasn’t into them. On the bottom of the pile was The Motel Life, with the cover letter that said, “Emile Hirsch set to play Frank Flannigan. I liked that name, “Flannigan”. I liked the title. I was intrigued. I read the script and I said, “Why is this on the bottom of the pile?” My agent knows I like Emile Hirsch, knows I’m friends with him. What the hell? I immediately called my agent and said, “Forget all these other scripts. This is the movie I want to be in. I want to play Jerry Lee.

Then, it became one of those stories you hear about when an actor gets something in his head and he just won’t stop. I had a nice meeting with the Polskys, but they were going to Sundance and I was going to Tokyo with Sofia. I knew that they had a month before this thing started shooting. I just wanted to stay on them. In my heart I felt like they didn’t see me in this role. I know directors–I’ve been doing this too long.

Were Stephen’s suspicions true?
Gabe: No. I think we wanted to do our due diligence. We weren’t ready to make a decision. We had other actors come in and do chemistry reads and figure things out. Stephen was very persistent, and that made a huge difference. We got to know him a bit more, and he read with Emile.

Stephen: I got in a room and they said they needed me to read with Emile. I thought, Jerry Lee’s too good. I’m gonna fight for Jerry Lee, because that’s a character I don’t read. They just don’t come around that much. You read things every once in a while. I read Dallas Buyers Club. I knew exactly what those two parts were, you know what I mean? My friends produced it. I’m a machine. Every good film that’s being made, I usually read. I want to know what my competition’s doing. It’s a game to me. It’s an art form. I have a brain that likes to feed off of those things, so I knew I had something special here. I wasn’t going to let it go to somebody else.

Gabe: When we read him with Emile, we realized that there’s something in Stephen, his spirit, that the character had deep in his core. That’s what tipped it for us. He had this energy.

Stephen: I don’t get a chance to audition, ever, because I get offered movies. I do them or I don’t do them. This one kind of energized me.

Was it fun to get to fight for it?
Stephen: A little bit, yeah. In the room, I felt that these guys were smart. They directed me smartly. I loved what they said. I could see myself working with two directors–I’d never done that. I’ve always had one director, one captain. I thought, “Is this going to be weird?” In the end, it was beautiful the way they worked it. They’re different. Everybody’s different, the way Jerry Lee and Frank are different, the way me and my brother Andrew are different. It’s the nature of who we are. I got great notes from Gabe that Alan wouldn’t have given me, but Alan would say things that complemented what Gabe was trying to say. It was a really cool balance. I’m really thankful that I got the fuckin’ role, because out of all the characters I’ve played, I think he’ll go down as one of my favorites.

He was worth fighting for. Even if I didn’t get the part, I’m not going to go over to Gabe’s house with a gun and go crazy, but there are those stories you hear. Holly Hunter and The Piano. Jane Campion didn’t want to know her! My agent at the time worked with Holly Hunter, and Holly put her on a plane, flew her to Australia, knocked on Jane’s house door, read for the role, and got it. Then, she won the Oscar. You’ve got to fight these days.

As an actor, you’ve got to go with what’s out there. I’m not a real writer, so it’s not like I’m pumping screenplays out of my head. If those scripts aren’t coming to me, I can’t do my job. Unless I want to do dinner theater or work on the streets of San Francisco reading poetry, I’ve got to make the filmmaker want me.

So after you finally won the role, how did it feel to shoot the movie?
Stephen: We shot the whole movie in 24 days, in the snow, on film. I love that they shot on film, like Sofia. It felt nostalgic to me, because you don’t get to shoot on film anymore. We’re always on Sonys or Reds. Those little chips bug me. I feel weird when they put those in. “We gotta load the chip!” Even on Public Enemies. I’m working on this 100-million-dollar movie and it’s, “Let’s load the chip!” I love the idea of mags and somebody rolling film. That’s just me–I love movies and I love old filmmaking. I thought for the soul of this film, it was nice to shoot it on 35mm.

The film looks really great.
Stephen: Roman Vasyanov is one of my favorite DP’s. He’s been doing really well. He went on to do End of Watch.

Gabe: He shot Charlie Countryman. He shot The East. We didn’t have time to move the camera around too much. We had to be very economical. You can still make the frames beautiful…

Stephen: …without 50 feet of track or a huge crane shot.

Gabe: Yeah. Every frame could be a piece of art.

Stephen: It’s one of the greatest steadycam shots, the one where Emile goes into the bar to watch the Tyson fight. That’s a one-shotter.

Gabe: We wanted to capture the mood and the gritty feel, but also have it feel kind of classic, too, you know what I’m saying? Not too crisp, but have this sort of softness about it.

The shot of the brothers in the car in the snow is beautiful.
Stephen: I love that guy. I want to work with Roman again. I love the shot where I burn the car on the snow. There are some great images in there, kind of like postcards.

The boys did it right, and I had a feeling of that during the Emile casting. Emile is a grounded actor and is so real. He reminded me of myself when I was his age. I saw him in that movie, The Girl Next Door, and he was fucking great in it. I went up to him at the premiere of Old School or something and told him he was a great actor and that he reminded me of me, which is kind of a weird thing to say. He probably thought, “God, that guy Stephen Dorff is kinda crazy!” I told him, “We’re gonna play brothers one day.” I’ve always gone on my instincts in my life and in my work. I just know things. I can feel things. Sure enough, it happened. I feel like he’s one of my brothers, you know?

What was your approach to the role of Jerry Lee? You completely disappear.
Stephen: I really wanted to look different. That’s easy, that stuff; you can lay scars, you can grow your hair out. You can go a little too far–at one point, we did go a little too far–but we always pulled it back. I think the inside of Jerry Lee is really what I had to find. That was something that happened in a few different moments. It happened during a rehearsal that me and Emile had in this little office room where we just sort of played through the scenes. It happened at a restaurant, at a bar in Reno. I was working on the big speech that’s at the beginning, in the car. It sort of gets you into the movie. That speech was fucking hard, and I didn’t know how to tell the story without making it to “sob-story” but at the same time being frightened that I’d killed someone. And now, I have to bring this other dilemma onto my brother, who has other dilemmas already. We were working on it at that restaurant, and I remember getting into it and finding something there. Once we got to Carson City where the hub of Jerry Lee’s performance takes place–the hospital, the final motel–it came together there.

Director Eran Riklis awkwardly sets a breezy odd-couple road trip movie under the dark cloud of the Israeli-Arab conflict in Zaytoun. The extreme polarity Riklis’ heavy-handed, inappropriately silly humor and the horrifying depictions of the 1982 war in Lebanon in which the story is set cancel each other out and leave nothing but a cringe-worthy, unfunny, tonally confused bore.

A miscast Stephen Dorff (who is much better in the upcoming The Motel Life) plays Yoni, a scruffy, cunning Israeli pilot who’s been downed across enemy lines, right into the hands of the PLO. Among Yoni’s captors is a 12-year-old boy with a giant chip on his shoulder named Fahed (a promising Abdallah El Akal), whose father’s just been killed in the streets, caught in crossfire. Fahed proposes a deal–he helps Yoni escape, and in return, Yoni escorts him to the home of his ancestors, where he can plant his father’s olive tree.

Predictably, the two warm up to each other over the course of their treacherous trek, but the bond doesn’t feel earned or convincing. In fact, the formation of their friendship seems virtually untraceable: They’re casting evil glares at each other one minute. Blink. All of a sudden, they’re hugging and yucking it up like they’re old pals, out of the blue. Where the hell did that come from? I thought you hated that guy! Fahed, you shot him just a few days ago for goodness sake! Their relationship just doesn’t develop organically enough to buy into.

Dorff and El Akal make the best with what they’re given, and even make a handful of sloppily-written scenes work that shouldn’t; a sequence involving a minefield is utterly absurd, but the actors’ performances sell the suspense.

Zaytoun’s most glaring issue is its schizophrenic shifts in mood and tone. It darts around in a frenzy, wanting to be a gaggy comedy, master-pupil story, fun action movie, gritty action movie, and Hollywood heart-toucher (especially in the finale), all at once. Its conceit is confused, and so are we.

In one of many grim depictions of the Arab-Israeli conflict, we see Fahed sprint across a road in Lebanon, the deafening sound of gunfire echoing in the night, to kneel next to his father, whose body’s been mutilated after just being killed in an explosion. It’s harrowing. Not much later, we see Fahed sharing a taxi with Yoni and an awful comic-relief cab driver who blasts the Bee Gee’s “Staying Alive” (seriously?) as he spouts idiotic one-liners. The humor is a big miss, just like every other joke in the movie, because the looming presence of the terrible war raging around them makes the comedy feel inappropriate and tasteless. It’s possible to make humor work under the weight of war, but it requires more finesse and tact than Riklis and penner Nader Rizq exhibit.

Visually, Zaytoun looks quite nice, even poetic at times. DP Dan Lausten photographs the majestic Israeli locales wonderfully, and despite the cloying sentimentality of Fahed and Yoni’s friendship, their picturesque surroundings impart their journey with a subtle, poetic sense of serenity that wouldn’t be there otherwise.

On MVFF’s gigantic penultimate day, a quintet of some of the industry’s most exciting directors gathered for a meeting of the minds, the stars and directors of At Middleton and Beside Still Waters unveiled their respective films to packed houses, and the whole lot of them partied it up in the beautiful town of Tiburon, right down the road.

Filmmaker Superfriends

To start off Day 10 of the festival, a killer lineup of directors gathered to participate in a panel organized by Variety, in which they discussed the industry and their filmmaking processes. In my previous festival recap, I mentioned that Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station) asked Steve McQueen a question during the 12 Years a Slave Q&A; McQueen didn’t seem to notice that the young buck was a talented filmmaker himself at the time, but when the two met officially for the Variety panel they became fast friends. Joining Coogler and McQueen for the panel was J.C. Chandor, who helmed the Robert Redford “man at sea” film, All is Lost and 2011’s Margin Call. We spoke to Chandor about the film, so keep an eye out for our interview next week. Also in attendance were John Wells of August: Osage County and Scott Coooper of Crazy Heart and Out of the Furnace.

Click to view slideshow.

Andy Garcia’s Campus Romance

At Middleton,  directed by newcomer Adam Rodgers, focuses on a sporadic on-campus romance between George (Andy Garcia) and Edith (Vera Farmiga), who meet while accompanying their kids on a campus tour of Middleton University. A walk-and-talk rom-com cut from the same cloth as Richard Linklater’s Before series but with a more lighthearted flare, the film was received incredibly well by the Mill Valley audience at CinéArts@Sequoia, who expressed their enthusiasm during the post-screening Q&A with Rodgers, Garcia, and the films’ producers. “When you have a chance to play with [an actor like] Vera Farmiga,” Garcia gushed, “[the scenes] are all fun.” The chemistry developed between the accomplished actors, amazingly, took no time to develop at all. “We never even read the script together once,” Garcia said, to the surprise of the audience, who had been so taken by the screen romance. “We got to know each other as the characters did on camera. She’s incredible.”

Future BIG Movie Stars CHILL in Beside Still Waters

A few feet down from the At Middleton screening, another movie about people talking was pleasing a separate batch of MVFF-goers. Chris Lowell, an actor best known for his roles in Veronica Mars (the “kickstarted” film version is shooting now) and The Help, hops into the director’s chair for the first time with his nostalgia-driven hangout movie, Beside Still Waters. In it, a tragedy causes a group of old childhood friends to reconvene at the memory-filled cabin in the forrest they grew up playing around in (no, it’s not a horror movie). The cast, comprised of some of some of the prettiest rising-star actors in the game right now (just look a the pictures!), were all in attendance at the MVFF screening along with their incredibly excited director, who was all smiles during the audience Q&A. “I was really excited to direct [and] talk to actors the way I’d like a director to talk to me,” Lowell beamed. “That was probably the thing I was most thrilled about. That, and not having to go through hair and makeup in the morning.” Comparisons to the king of all hangout movies, The Big Chill, are inevitable, and Lowell didn’t shy away from acknowledging the influence of Kasdan’s film, which has a strikingly similar premise. “[My co-writer Mohit Narang] and I obsessed over every conceivable reunion [movie], to see what people did right and wrong. The Big Chill is obviously the big tentpole film for [this kind of movie], which is why everyone comes back to it. It’s a film that you watch when you’re sick because it makes you feel good and right about the world.”

Worlds Collide…Over Cocktails

After the dual screenings of At Middleton and Beside Still Waters, the buzzing crowds and proud filmmakers met again at the Tiburon Tavern just down the road to schmooze, booze, and enjoy delectable bites of delicious food (the coffee-coated cheese was curious, yet excellent). Andy Garcia and the Beside Stll Waters cast were happy to mingle, keeping the good vibes flowing along with the bubbly. Lowell and Rodgers, both elated to have their films so well-received, shared their experiences and a big, congratulatory hug.

Stiller Closes Out With Mitty

MVFF closed out big with what looks to be one of the most visually striking films of the year, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Ben Stiller unsurprisingly drew a blitz of media and fan attention when he arrived at the CinéArts@Sequoia theater to present his passion project, about an office worker (played by Stiller himself) who lives in picturesque fantasy worlds represented onscreen beautifully by Stiller and DP Stuart Dryburgh (The Piano). After the screening, Stiller was given the Mill Valley Award and then headed down the street to San Rafael’s beautiful Elk’s Lodge where everyone–from the hard-working festival staff, to the filmmakers, to industry people, to the excited festival-goers–celebrated as the wonderful 11-day festival came to a close.

But wait…that’s not all! We’ve still got a ton of content coming out of the festival, so stay tuned in the next few days for more MVFF goodness!

The confinement genre is on an upward trend as of late and you can add another to the list, Brake. The title of the film would have been better suited named Trunk, as the entire film takes place in a trunk of a vehicle that our hero is trapped in. Perhaps the title was going for a play on words as the villains try to “break” the protagonist to giving out national security information. Nevertheless, it remains an engaging thriller down to the end, which has a take it or leave it kind of ending, depending on how much you want to look into it.

“What is this?” Jeremy Reins (Stephen Dorff) says as he is kicking and pounding on a glass box that he finds himself in upon waking up. Red glare from the digital clock that is counting downwards fills the box he is trapped in. Once the clock reaches zero he realizes that there is a CB radio inside the box as someone begins to talk.

That someone is Henry Shaw (JR Bourne) who seems to be in the same exact position as Jeremy is; trapped in a glass box with the exact same time left on the clock (the clock reset itself to 4:00 minutes once it reached zero). Jeremy’s first instinct is that this is because of a large gambling debt that he owes. So he asks the man on the other end of the radio if he owes money to anyone but Henry denies having any.

By this time the clock reaches zero again and Jeremy hears footsteps around him then the start of an engine. Suddenly he figures out that he is inside the trunk of a car. He notices there is a trunk release lever on the outside of the box as if to tease him how close he is to escape. There is tube from inside the vehicle to the box which he finds a post card asking where the location of Roulette is.

Over time we find out that Roulette means a location to the underground bunker where the president, vice present and other high profile people go when there is a national security threat. They call it Roulette because the location switches among several different locations on any given day. It turns out that Jeremy is a Secret Service agent that knows this critical information that only a select few know. The antagonists here try their best to get that privileged information out of him.

An obvious comparison can be made to the film Buried as it shares a very similar premise. Both start with the main character waking up inside a confined box that they have no recollection about how they got there. In Buried it was a coffin, in Brake it is a glass box. Both have access to outside communication and at some point in each film the trap space slowly fills up with something that can drown our heroes. There are so many comparisons that can be made to each other, heck, they even start with the same letter.

Over the past few years there have been a number of films that share the same claustrophobic theme you can practically start a new genre called “confinement movies”. In addition to Brake and Buried, you could also include; Phone Booth, Panic Room, Wrecked, and 127 Hours to name a few. As with any confinement movie, the lack of space literally comes with the territory, making it a challenge as a filmmaker.

Stephen Dorff gives an intense performance as the tight-lipped noble Secret Service agent. Being the on the screen for the entire film is not an easy task but he did a great job handling that responsibility. This role may not just have been Dorff’s most challenging to date, but also his best.

Brake as a whole mostly succeeds, especially up until the very end. Many people are down on the twists at the end and it is because films like Saw have us trained to look for twists beyond the obvious. But I do not believe the somewhat predictable ending completely destroys the thrilling 80 minutes before it. While this confinement picture does have it’s flaws, luckily it is not until the very end that they reveal themselves.