Who Killed Cock Robin?

Who Killed Cock Robin is a curious movie, I found. Curious in the sense of I was wondering why this was programmed at the Vancouver Interenational Film Festival, where I saw it. It's a very poorly shot, strangely acted, and highly pretentious sort of film, and I was actually going to leave around the 45 minute mark when something actually started to happen (commonly known as the plot). But until then, we see Art Art Art, what with the changing film stocks (from Super 8 (and we know it's Art when there are film flares!) to wobbly hand-held video. The lead actor in this, one Barett Miller, is all right I guess with what little he does. He sort of looks like Josh Hartnett, so he's got that going for him, I guess. But the plot could be just summed up briefly, as I said in the title. Why I stayed is anyone's guess, I'm gathering it was because of the glorious mess I was watching.

My husband and I saw this movie at the Sundance 2005 film festival. The plot and the pace of the movie are very boring, almost all of the audience was falling asleep. The guy next to me was playing video games on his cell phone. Characters are plain, you don't have any sympathy for any of them. Very low budget movie. One scene of a sunset went on forever, the same when the main character was singing a song for about five minutes. The best moment of this movie when it is over and you can go home and also vote for it as "awful". People literally jumped up when the credits started and didn't want to stay for "Questions and Answers" with the Director and Actors. We were quite disappointed that the Sundance film festival would even consider this amateur shooting as a movie and include it in the competition, placing a glowing and deceptive review of it on the Sundance web page.

I saw Who Killed Cock Robin at Sundance 05, and yes, many people disliked the film rather strongly. Those that left before the Q and A session missed out, however, as a great deal of light was brought to the experimental nature of the film.

The main thing to understand about Cock Robin is that it is not primarily character or story-driven. The central focus is placed on the setting - the desolate wasteland of Butte, Montana - and its pervasive atmosphere of decay and hopelessness. Much of the film is told through image and sound. Dialogue, especially in the first half of the movie is sparse. What dialogue does appear, is improvised around a few dozen pre-planned scenes. Shot documentary-style on various media (hd, mini-dv, 8mm) the experimental bent of the film is an ultra-realism, conveyed by seemingly-aimless characters, conversations, and camera-work, that build on each other to create the rhythms of what it *feels* like to live in the wasteland of Butte.

If experimental and unconventional storytelling is your bag - definitely check out this gritty atmospheric film. If not, you'll probably lose interest VERY quickly.

Certainly not for everyone, but I enjoyed it.

The story lies in the intersecting lives of three men living in Butte, Montana. Barret Murphy, like the town, has had a rough go of it. He keeps his job and hangs on with the help of his two friends: Charlie, his landlord and makeshift father figure, and his best friend Dylan, raised with privilege and someone who understands Barret politically if not emotionally. Their temporal happy existence is tested, however, when Barret has a run-in with the law.

I was one of the few at Sundance '05 that really liked this movie. As soon as I got what Travis Wilkerson was going for it felt as if I had an epiphany, it wasn't something I came to quickly though. This film is not about getting you from point a to point b and resolving some conflict along the way. It's about creating a feeling and an understanding of a place and a people. I hope to get the chance to see it again, now that I understand more of the director's vision. If you get a chance to see it, pay close attention to the music, which is truly amazing and for the most part written by the actor who sings it.