How did the Taverners end up with the Neo-Marxists in Venice Beach?
Several days before the movie starts, on the same houseboat on Lake Mead, Tab Taverner, Ronald/Roland's father, told Ronald -- who has amnesia -- that he must kidnap his brother in order to protect him. Roland, a Hermosa Beach police officer, had gotten involved in a "deep conspiracy" and would be in danger if anybody found out that he was alive. Presumably, Tab was afraid that the Baron's people would find out that Roland had survived the trip through the time rift. Tab wanted Ronald to help the Neo-Marxists destroy USIDent, so he entrusted Roland and Ronald to Zora Carmichaels, who then drove them to Venice Beach.
What do all the characters in the film keep on quoting from?
Much of Pilot Abilene's voiceover consists of direct quotations from the Book of Revelation. The other main reference points are T.S. Eliot's "Hollow Man" ("This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but with a whimper") and Robert Frost's "The Two Roads" ("Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-/ I took the one less traveled by").
The first time Fortunio appears in the film, he quotes Karl Marx ("Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval"), and several characters quote the song "Three Days" by Jane's Addiction ("We saw the shadows of the morning light/ The shadows of the evening sun/ Until the shadows and the light were one"). The film also evokes Kurt Vonnegut's sci-fi absurdism, Philip K. Dick's philosophical approach to time travel, and Thomas Pynchon's sprawling narratives.
What about movies?
The film that is most obviously referenced is "Kiss Me Deadly," a 1955 film noir about a private detective who uncovers a plot to detonate a nuclear device. The movie plays in the background in several scenes, and in the "Prequel Saga," Krysta tells Boxer it is his favorite movie. As in "Southland Tales," a character in "Kiss Me Deadly" picks up a stranger in the desert, and one of the main characters in the film is named after a poet. The name of Dr. Severin Exx is a reference to the name of an evil doctor in the movie "Kiss Me Deadly," and Boxer Santaros' convertible is the same car driven by Ralph Meeker in the 1955 film.
"Southland Tales" also borrows from "Repo Man," which ends with a flying car. Singer Rebekah Del Rio, who (as herself) performs the "Star Spangled Banner" onboard the mega-zeppelin, is also featured in David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive." Jericho Cane is the name of Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in "End of Days."
What's the deal with the Treer company, and why are there all these references to Karl Marx?
The Treer company is a German defense contractor that employs Dr. Inga Von Westphalen, a zeppelin designer and the Baron's mother. In the "Southland Tales" universe, when war broke out following the nuclear attacks in Texas, Treer was contracted to build several mega-zeppelins to ferry troops and equipment across the world. Kelly has said that this idea was inspired by a real U.S. Army project.
In the universe of the film, Dr. Inga Von Westphalen is also the granddaughter of Jenny Von Westphalen, Karl Marx's wife. The name Treer is a reference to Trier, Marx's birthplace. All of these references to Marxism aren't entirely unconnected to the film's biblical references. The Book of Revelation and Marxism have been connected by academics -- both advocate the overthrow of tyranny. In fact, Marx was indirectly influenced by the Book of Revelation in his writing. If you replace the Antichrist with the bourgeoisie, and the kingdom of God with a communist utopia, you've got the same basic narrative.
Does "Southland Tales: The Prequel Saga" explain what this fluid karma stuff is?
Fluid karma is an "organic compound" that the Treer company discovered while drilling off the coast of Israel. It exists under the Earth's mantle, circles the world like a "serpent," and, as the movie explains, is being used by the Baron to power his Utopia energy plants.
Then why do people keep on injecting it into their neck?
It also works as a drug. As the movie suggests, the Baron conducted secret experiments, headed by Simon Theory, with soldiers in Iraq. The project was named "Serpentine Dream Theory." When scientists injected fluid karma into the soldiers, they became telepathic and could see into the past and, eventually, the future.
Two of the solders that participated in the experiment were Roland Taverner and Pilot Abilene. Before being drafted, Pilot Abilene was also a movie star. He played a character named "Donnie" in a movie with Boxer Santaros (in an obvious allusion to "Donnie Darko"). Shortly after they received their first injection of fluid karma, however, Taverner and Abilene were sent on a mission to Fallujah, and Taverner accidentally injured Abilene with a grenade -- disfiguring him. That's why Taverner always feels so guilty.
Why did Roland Taverner end up driving Boxer Santaros through the space-time rift?
After Roland Taverner came back from Iraq, he got a job as a police officer in Hermosa Beach, thanks to his father. For reasons that never become entirely clear, he was hired by the Baron to kidnap Boxer Santaros from a charity scavenger hunt and drive him to Lake Mead.
Then what?
When Boxer and Taverner went through the space-time rift, they traveled 69 minutes back in time -- creating duplicate versions of themselves. But once they went through the rift, the car's self-destruct mechanism was activated, killing the copy of Boxer that did not travel back in time.
Why did both Taverners survive?
No idea. It never becomes clear what exactly happened in the desert. We may have to wait for the DVD commentary to figure that one out.
What exactly happens at the end of the movie?
Again, we're not entirely sure. But if "Southland Tales" follows the same logic as "Donnie Darko," as laid out in that film's DVD extras, when the fourth dimension is corrupted, it causes the creation of two parallel universes: the Tangent Universe and the Primary Universe.
The Tangent Universe is an alternate reality to our own. You could argue that all of "Southland Tales" occurs in the Tangent Universe -- hence the film's alternate history of the past three years, and its weird mishmash of pop culture. In "Donnie Darko," the world ends when the Tangent Universe collapses, which may also be what happens at the end of "Southland Tales." Why that happens when the Taverners touch, only Richard Kelly knows.
About the writer
Thomas Rogers is a freelance writer living in New York.
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