At this stage of Melbourne’s lockdown, watching an increasingly hectic-drunk bar crowd steadily disintegrate while clinging onto a frail sense of connectedness might seem like (a) aspirational genius, or (b) far too on-the-nose to cope with. It’s dealers choice if you enter brotherly directorial duo Bill and Turner Ross’s Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets.
Depicting the final day of a hangdog hangout called the Roaring 20’s, located well off of the plastic fantastic glitz of the Las Vegas strip, the film makes you wonder if gentrification is even the right term for whatever is going on here. Diving into this doco is a bit like hanging around in Star Wars’ Mos Eisley cantina long after Luke, Han and the gang have gone, leaving a slain bounty hunter and a severed arm behind them.
The rusted on patrons and their patter are straight from a Cassavetes movie. You’ve got everyone from the increasingly aggro grumbler who has it in for everyone, the ‘I coulda been a star’ actor down on his luck, and the up-for-everything lover whose need for love is almost Shakespearean in its disarming tragedy. As the day rolls into night, and the exuberantly bearded, guitar-playing jolly giant behind the bar is replaced by the tough-as-nails mum whose sons are up to no good in the back alley, the mood steadily slumps into sombre. It’s the end of an era most folks have already forgotten.
And yet the film isn’t mocking the disarray that splatters across the screen like spilled beer. These rogues deserve our sympathy, and many of them our respect too, in a subtle exploration of the have nots of America’s broken dream. What is a bit more suspect is the failure of the film to own up to a fairly hefty bit of artifice at play here by the directors (that I won’t spoil). But if you’re up for last drinks at a bar that’s very far from the glamour of its name, then watch first, ask questions on Google later.