Beastly Reviews: Farewell to Hollywood
Hollywood is scared of this movie.
I watched this film in a class called "Reading Film". The professor, before starting it, said, "Hollywood is scared of this movie." I see why.
No matter how objective a documentarian tries to be, their bias lives in the editing, in the inclusion or exclusion of material. Henry Corra gets past all that by calling his work "living cinema," a filmmaking technique in which he becomes personally involved with his subjects, collaborating with them to create a film. This eschews the seemingly "objective" lens of documentary filmmaking and, at the same time, cheapens it a bit. The result is a conflicting and unavoidably self-gratifying product in which Corra gets to be both the subject and framer of his story, plus whoever else he happens to rope in.
In his recent project, Farewell to Hollywood, the person roped in is the late Regina Nicholson, a 17-year-old filmmaker battling cancer. Her goal is to make a movie before she dies.
According to the film's website, Corra met Reggie, "an obsessive cinephile who was battling a terminal illness," at a film festival. "What developed over nearly two years is a powerful friendship and poignant relationship between Reggie and me. I became her collaborator, friend, and defender in her fight to find artistic and personal freedom."
Freedom and liberation are themes of Farewell to Hollywood — though perhaps in different ways than Corra himself would describe. Reggie's parents at first seem over-protective and churlish. They're as concerned as any parents would be when their dying daughter starts hanging out with a much older man. Then the film gets dark.
As viewers, we can barely believe the audio: Reggie, bugged with a microphone, walks into her bedroom. Her mother asks if she's wired with a mic. Reggie lies, "I'm not wired."
"I wish you were dead," her mother says.
When Reggie continues working on her film (and her friendship) with Corra, her parents disown her and stop paying her medical bills. This is a young woman who receives chemotherapy every week and is on a host of different medications. Corra offers to care for her and cover all her medical needs — while continuing to make a film about the young woman's final days.
The uncomfortable tension in the film makes it an almost unbearable viewing experience. The sheer exposure of Farewell asks questions of privacy and ethics — questions that should galvanise critics, filmmakers, and audiences. Do we permit this filmmaking? Is Corra using Reggie — is he taking advantage of a dying girl? Can his telling of events be trusted?
Broader questions come. In terms of death and suffering, what should we be permitted to see? How involved should filmmakers be with their subjects — especially so delicate and vulnerable a subject? As an IndieWire reviewer wrote, "Moving or offensive? [Farewell to Hollywood is] the most paradoxical moviegoing experience of the year."
By the end of the film, Reggie is alone with Corra, living in his house, bedridden. Returning to her parents' objections, we can't help but ask the obvious questions: What is the extent of his involvement with her, and why? Is he manipulating her? Exploiting her? Caring for her? Loving her? All the above?
If the horrifying audio of Reggie's interactions with her parents is to be believed, Corra was, perhaps, the lesser of two evils for a young woman who was failed or manipulated by every adult in her life and was left at the mercy of a stranger who filmed her even as she died.
We will never see the countless hours of footage left out of the final cut or all the unrecorded conversations, but we at least see what young Reggie wanted: a film about a girl whose grace and intelligence surpassed her age, the story of a promising young life and a world ill-suited to keep it.
Love, Beastly
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