Craig J. Clark
Everybody who travels to Rain City goes there for a reason. Some have hopes and dreams of what it will offer them. Some want to get ahead and believe crime is the shortcut to a better life. And some want to pick up where they left off, no matter how improbable the possibility of a reset may seem.
While it may be a cliché to say a film’s setting is a character in its own right, that’s definitely the case with Rain City, where Alan Rudolph’s Trouble in Mind takes place. Shooting it in Seattle was a no-brainer, as was filming a fancy restaurant scene at the Space Needle (“Rain City’s tallest restaurant”), but Rudolph and his crew took pains to make it a place out of time, freely mixing elements of the distant past and near-future to create a present his characters could wander around in and find – or lose – themselves.
First to appear is Kris Kristofferson’s Hawk, a former cop fresh out of a stint in prison. He’s paid his debt to society and is looking for something to do with his idle hands apart from making the highly detailed models cinematographer Toyomichi Kurita’s camera occasionally glides through during scene transitions. “You got a fine eye for detail,” says one of the prison guards walking Hawk out. “What do you expect from a cop?” asks the other, offering the first clue to his background that Rudolph doles out over the course of the film.
While this is a homecoming for Hawk – and a return to the scene of the crime that sent him up for 2842 days (he counted) – Rain City also greets newcomers in young couple Coop (Rudolph regular Keith Carradine) and Georgia (Lori Singer). She’s the hopeful one, enthusing that “the city is a promise of something better,” but he’s jaded. “I’ve been to plenty of cities, and they ain’t nothing but trouble.” All three converge on Wanda’s Café, a greasy spoon whose owner is played with flinty resolve by Geneviève Bujold (like Carradine, a returnee from Rudolph’s Choose Me).
As much as Wanda tries to help all three of them get a foothold in Rain City – Hawk for old time’s sake, the couple because she’s innately generous – both men are tempted by its criminal element. Barred from rejoining the police force, Hawk is courted by gangster Hilly Blue, who’s as overdramatic as any character played by Divine (forgoing drag entirely) would be. (He’s even followed around by his own personal violinist.) As for Coop, he falls in with Joe Morton’s philosophical Solo, a war vet who brings him in on a shady deal that promises quick money, but the longer he stays in Solo’s orbit, the more Coop changes, eventually becoming unrecognizable to his wife.
Significantly, Georgia and Hawk are the two characters who don’t fully acclimate themselves. Hawk never sheds the distinctive, all-black ensemble he arrives in, and Georgia remains mostly innocent in spite of the opportunities for corruption that present themselves. In contrast, Coop’s look evolves and his hairstyle in particular gets more extreme the deeper he gets in with Solo, who sports his own distinctive look, a reflection of how much time he’s spent in Rain City, as well as the lingering effects of his war service. While it’s never specified which war Solo fought in, another may be in the offing based on how many “Ready for War” posters dot the streets, along with the omnipresent soldiers patrolling them and the jeep driving around with a loudspeaker encouraging citizens to “enlist in the militia.” (This is a device Rudolph borrowed from his mentor Robert Altman, specifically the Hal Phillip Walker campaign truck that is a constant presence in Nashville, on which Rudolph was an assistant director.)
Eventually, Rain City’s reality gets so heightened – much like Coop’s hair – that Trouble in Mind takes a turn for the absurd. When it starts racking up a body count in the back half, Rudolph devises unique demises for some of the supporting cast, following the lead of his characters as they let their emotions rule their decisions, and defying narrative logic in the process. “Well, thank God love is blind,” Wanda says, “otherwise it would see too much.” That sums up the film as well as anyone could.
Like his characters, Rudolph has followed his whims, resulting in an idiosyncratic career that’s hard to pin down. If nothing else, the selections streaming on the Criterion Channel this month show off his range as a director. Trouble in Mind’s neo-noir deconstruction is far removed from Remember My Name’s oblique character study, and his late ’90s efforts Afterglow and Breakfast of Champions make for even stranger bedfellows. Love in all its permutations is never far from his mind, though. Ask any of his characters and they’ll tell you that falling in love is the quickest way to get into trouble.
“Trouble in Mind” is streaming on the Criterion Channel as part of “Alan Rudolph’s Dramas of Desire.”
