Some time midway through “Sasquatch Sunset,” I got slightly hung up on the logic of the latest film from brothers David and Nathan Zellner and realized that could be the point and not the point at all. The fraternal directorial duo behind “Kumiko the Treasure Hunter” and “Damsel” have a way of mining the profound out of the silliest situations, typically revealing the very human response to the absurdity that crops up in the daily life of being in a particular time and place. You don’t immediately know when their new comedy is set, though one assumes it’s the stone age when being introduced to a Bigfoot family that’s wandering around in the woods and as they pass around a turtle like it’s a telephone and come across a skunk for the first time that naturally sprays its unpleasant scent in their faces, every experience is believed to be a new one for them, though when the family clearly consists of three grown adults and a child, it left me wondering why at least some of these things were still unknown to them in their time on this earth.
It was at this point that the smarter thing to do was not to think too deeply about the deliriously funny film that gives the Zellners the opportunity to make the Three Stooges-esque comedy you know they’ve been wanting to make forever after previously positioning Robert Pattison as a Harold Lloyd/Buster Keaton-type rube in “Damsel.” In fact, the idea for “Sasquatch Sunset” has been percolating for the past decade since making the short “Sasquatch Birth Journal 2” in which a Bigfoot was observed delivering the miracle of life when the reality appeared to be anything but, and it would seem to be a thin premise to stretch out to a feature-length film. For those who aren’t amused by slapstick or the unpredictable emission of bodily fluids, the dialogue-free 88 minutes will probably feel like an eternity, but when being done this well is about as rare as a Bigfoot sighting, it is a ridiculously good time for anyone else following the clan as they inch closer to some kind of civilization, showing that they are in no way prepared for it as everything they experience is trial and error when so much of the world is unknown to them, from eating mushrooms to wondering what’s inside eggs with only a wisp of a plot to tie it all together as red Xs start to appear on trees.
When the Zellners won’t let anything get in the way of a good laugh, it feels only natural that Nathan assumes the role of the dumbest and most territorial in the family, or at least the one who doesn’t seem to know not to go back for seconds after consuming things that he shouldn’t, and it becomes a driving concern in the film whether his belligerence and bluster could easily get the rest of the clan killed. Although Jesse Eisenberg, Riley Keough and Christophe Zajac-Denek are virtually unrecognizable under layers of makeup and prosthetics, it speaks volumes to the skills of both the actors and directors that their personalities come through their physicality, with both Eisenberg and Keough cast for qualities they’ve become well-known for on screen such as being overly analytical in the former’s case or gently defiant in the latter to make indistinguishable characters distinctive. (Credit also to the marvelous work of costume designer Steve Newborn and creature designer Daniel Carrasco for giving way to such impressively emotive results.)
Although there wouldn’t appear to be any larger goal in mind than to have fun, “Sasquatch Sunset” does have a killer punchline unrelated to any of its jokes and in watching the uncivilized creatures gradually become a little more enlightened, the persistent belief that the mythical creatures walk among us even today begs the question if any of the rest of us have or if simply believing in them makes them as real as anything else. Filmed in northern California where there have been the most alleged Bigfoot appearances, “Sasquatch Sunset” may not catch any actual ones in the flesh, but brilliantly shows how they live in the mind.
“Sasquatch Sunset” will screen again at Berlinale on February 20th at 9:30 pm at the Cineplex Titania, February 21st at 1 pm at Cubix 9, and February 25th at 4 pm at HKW1 – Miriam Makeba Auditorium. It will be released in the US on April 12th.