Dust Factory

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What's the International Man of Mystery afraid of? "Carnys [shudder] . . . small hands." And Austin Powers isn't alone. Like Santa and his beckoning lap, clowns, mimes, carnivals, and circuses have scared the bejeesus out of as many kids as they've enthralled, long before mass murderer John Wayne Gacy gave clowns a permanent black eye.

Even filmmakers know this, because clowns and the circus have often been used to convey the sense of a bizarre world—a tendency inherited, perhaps, from Toulouse-Lautrec's somewhat dark and distorted paintings. One of the first shows that I remember using clowns and the circus as a kind of drug-state alternative reality was TV's "The Wild Wild West," where a western-era government agent (Robert Conrad) and his sidekick (Ross Martin) were subjected to a virtual kangaroo court of giggling jacks-in-the-box and bizarre carnival characters. It was creepy.

So are similar scenes in "The Dust Factory," an otherwise beautiful film about a young teen who struggles to come to grips with the deaths of his father and grandmother, and the Alzheimer's that has all but made his grandfather a living corpse.

Filmed on location in Oregon and Washington, "The Dust Factory" is a stylish film that offers brilliant scenery and cinematography, engaging characters and strong performances, and the best of intentions. It's a highly poetic film apparently aimed at young adults which also holds appeal for a broader audience. But Pulitzer Prize winner Karl Shapiro once remarked that "the good poet sticks to his real loves, those within the realm of probability. He never tries to hold hands with God or the human race." And co-writer and director Eric Small is most successful when he stays close to home and deals with the things he knows. When he goes off in the direction of the unknown—some vague and indeterminable Oz that we're to believe is some sort of "magical" limbo land between life and death, a more pleasant purgatory, if you will—things get as muddled as if he had just relocated to David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive."

There's a little bit of "The Wizard of Oz," a little bit of "It's a Wonderful Life," and a little bit of "Labyrinth" in this coming-of-age film. "Grandma was the first dead person I've ever seen," Ryan Flynn (Ryan Kelley, who also did "Mean Creek") narrates in voiceover. That's because he's mute during the first half of the "real life" segments of the movie, rendered so, we learn, because he witnessed his dad's death. Ryan is a likable fellow with an equally affable best friend, Rocky, with whom he races everywhere—Ryan on in-line skates and Rocky on bicycle—and enjoys life the way most young teens do. Except that, like his grandfather, whom we guess has also seen his share of hardship in life, he never talks.

But as it happened with George Bailey, everything changes when Ryan plunges into the river and emerges into an alternate reality. One of the first things he sees when he returns to town is an old car parked in his driveway. Mom and his step-father are nowhere to be seen. Only grandpa is there, and now grandpa can walk and talk. Veteran Armin Mueller-Stahl seems to relish the guide-figure role, as they wander around the house he shares things with Ryan, gradually bringing him up to speed about the situation they're in. But he has help. Ryan notices a perpetually twirling girl (Hayden Panettiere, from "Ice Princess" and "Remember the Titans") who spins in his front yard and skates across a lake that's not frozen. Follow me, she beckons, like a flirtatious siren. When Ryan tries to follow and his foot plops in the water, she remarks, "Oh, you must have come here during the summer." Apparently, whatever the season that you come to this limbo land, it remains the same and you remain frozen until you're "ready" to return.

Now, here's where it supposed to get "deep," while for many people it will only seem hard to fathom. Melanie takes him through a field (nope, no poppies) and into a giant big-top tent that's erected at the top of a hill. Inside, there's a show going on. Call it audience participation carnivale, because apparently those who are "ready" to leave this limbo land have to climb the ladder to the trapeze and then swing over to be caught by a performer. If they make the leap, they "move on." If they fall and splat into a pile of dust on the big-top floor, it's back to earth. "It's called 'getting dusted,'" Melanie explains. "When you decide to make the leap you get one chance. You either make it and go on, or you get dusted and go home." While that would seem to place all the responsibility on the heads and shoulders of those in limbo, they're still dependent upon the "catcher," and that's never addressed. Neither is the grandfather's Alzheimer's state. If the filmmakers are suggesting that Alzheimer's is a state of limbo between life and death, as with people in comas or momentary states of unconsciousness, rather than acknowledge an involuntary state and degenerative mental condition, Small seems to give the grandfather the same "have the courage to make the leap" choice. And what if he gets "dusted"? Does that mean he remains alive but in a vegetative state forever?

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