Photo by Vulcanizadora: A Bleak and Shocking Exploration of Middle-Aged Alienation
Life comes for us all, even slacker filmmakers. Michigan-based indie stalwart Joel Potrykus has always explored loneliness in his work, but his latest, Vulcanizadora, plumbs a particular middle-aged variant. This is the alienation of divorced dads becoming estranged from their kids; the existential hell of knowing that you’ve made mistakes and that there’s nothing you can do to change them.
Despair in the woods
To underline the passage of time, Vulcanizadora revives the characters Potrykus and his muse Joshua Burge played in 2014’s Buzzard. Ten years later, Marty Jackitansky (Burge) and Derek Skiba (Potrykus) are the same overgrown adolescents they once were, even as their circumstances have changed. Sometime in the past decade, Derek got married, had a kid, and then got divorced. Meanwhile, Marty’s petty crimes have escalated, with consequences that are harder to escape than those of his check-fraud scheme in Buzzard.
“The bullshit lulls the audience into a false sense of safety, lending shock value to the reveal of Marty’s latest Erector-set weapon — and what he plans to do with it — midway through the film.”
Marty and Derek’s existential crisis
The rest is despair, as attempts at accountability and redemption are met with hostility and indifference. There are still jokes in these later scenes, but “black comedy” isn’t quite sufficient. Vantablack comedy, maybe?
Vulcanizadora adds arias to Potrykus’ usual heavy-metal musical cues, making this the rare movie to feature both Maria Callas and a Sepultura side project on its soundtrack. The melodrama of opera fits the sadder tone of this film: These aren’t angry young men anymore, but defeated middle-aged ones.
Joel Potrykus on set
In the past, Potrykus, or at least his characters, were content to numb their existential terror with junk food and video games. But eventually, shit gets real. There are things in life that you can’t avoid, and things that you can’t take back. Vulcanizadora doesn’t know how to cope with these truths, and will alienate much, if not most, of its audience as a result. But the honesty with which it expresses these dark thoughts is commendable — and more reflective than a dozen articles on the “male loneliness epidemic.”
