This is clearly a hoax. And utterly implausible. So this man makes two serious attempts at killing himself, and then...just stops? He even gets stumbling drunk and doesn't attempt to kill himself again? He then makes friends with the detective guy, gets drunk again, appears to be having an okay time, then literally runs away once the jig is up like a little kid who can't have ice cream? The funniest scene is the detective chasing him all over the desert like a monty python skit. Then, the detective is all dumbfounded when he gets to the edge of the cliff, only to find that the man jumped to his death, but instead of falling straight down he appears to have sailed out 400 yards. Some leaping skills.
I knew this was fake after the sex scene. Legally, you'd have to get permission from this woman. Fine. They got permission. Then...no interviews? No pictures? Not to mention that this guy was a total weirdo who filmed everything. You're telling me the filmmakers couldn't convince her into handing over more material? Furthermore, the entire move contains...three mins? Five mins tops of "archival" footage?
The detective guy. For the life of me I could not figure out what the hell he was trying to do with his accent. Or, if that was just his accent. It sounded like he was trying to do a southern drawl. It was atrocious. Then, it dawned on me, he sounded like Mr. Garrison from South Park. Then, he keeps making the point "I can't call the cops." Ummm...yeah, actually you can. No, they wont arrest him, but they'll intervene. Furthermore, while only the audience has the knowledge of his suicide attempts, a logical person would assume that at the very least he is having a nervous breakdown and at the very worst is suicidal. All you have to do is mention the words "suicide" and the cops will show up to intervene.
I hate movies that have to rely on a gimmick (Fargo). Even the ending "based on a true story" had so many qualifiers that it could have applied to a story that my grandmother heard about her neighbor's boss's nephew's friend's sister's husband who killed himself. Bogus.
Desert Cathedral
2014
Action / Drama / Mystery / Thriller
Desert Cathedral
2014
Action / Drama / Mystery / Thriller
Keywords: suicideroad movieforeclosure
Plot summary
In 1992, Peter Collins, a Seattle real estate agent who is considered a stable person in every sense of the word, leaves his place of work, Regal Realty, without a word, not to go home to his wife Annah Collins and his adolescent daughter Samantha Collins, but to drive off somewhere with the ultimate intention of committing suicide. He does leave a videotaped message for his boss Don informing him of his immediate resignation, that video which Don shows to Annah, who in turn does not know what to think in Peter's obvious want to disappear. As long as he is alive, Peter keeps a video diary ultimately to provide Annah not so much with the answers, but his feelings as to why he is planning on doing what he is thinking of doing. It ends up being somewhat of a stream of consciousness play-by-play view of his emotions as he largely wanders through the Nevada desert. Meanwhile, Annah has to try and figure out why Peter has left and to where he's gone. Part of that process is to go through his possessions to find any clues. She also hires a private investigator, Duran Palouse. If Duran is able to locate Peter, he has to decide how best to proceed as he cannot force Peter to do anything he doesn't want to do, such as go home.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
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Another Entry Into The Found Footage Genre
"Desert Cathedral": Avant-Garde filmmaking at it's most fascinating.
The freshly wide-released and most unconventionally presented docudrama "Desert Cathedral" seemed to offer some of my very favorite facets of film. These are in no particular order of preference: suspense, drama, a darkish theme, an enigmatic and sparingly speaking main character and the vast wide open spaces of the American west. Having seen this remarkable movie now I am here tell ya that's a "Bingo" on all counts.
I am a longtime continuous resident of the Puget Sound region and still was not familiar with the actual Seattle area events upon which "Desert Cathedral" is based. Veteran actor Lee Tergesen is simply superb as Peter Collins, a realtor who blows his big chance at grabbing the brass ring when a dream housing development project goes belly up. Unable to absorb such unexpected failure Collins becomes completely unhinged. We then watch as a man plunges headlong into the abyss of an unnerving nervous breakdown. Collins drives south and away from his job, home and family, eventually winding up in the middle of nowhere, USA. His frame of mind is fragile, his mission macabre. Collins also makes an audio and video journal of his bizarre odyssey, primarily as a means of apologizing to his wife and young daughter for the pain he knew he was inflicting upon them. These recordings are expertly interwoven into the film together with the dramatic performance footage in a stunningly seamless editing triumph on behalf of Oriana Soddu and Marc Vives. And every bit of what we see on this ominous journey is relentlessly riveting.
I had a chance to visit by phone with first-time feature film Director Travis Gutiérrez Senger, who also wrote and helped to produce "Desert Cathedral". I will be posting excerpts from our interview later this week. Senger shared with me that his follow-up to "Desert Cathedral" is already in the works. This time the environment explored will be the much more limited setting of a drug rehab clinic in what Senger describes as a "hallucinatory dark comedy/drama". That may sound like somewhat of a big bite to chew. However if this impressive debut is any sort of indication at all, it's a relatively decent bet that this talented and provocative young filmmaker is more than capable of sinking his teeth into the challenge.
Ambivalence
The film was flawlessly acted and the characters adequately fleshed out, but the pacing was excruciatingly slow with little to no story arc. I actually like slow dramas, but this was a lot like watching paint dry.