SXSW Review: PHILLIP THE FOSSIL

It’s a relatively modern trend for movies being made with such realism and authenticity to real life — the lives of average, everyday people – often producing some amazingly poignant stories without the glitz of Hollywood standards. PHILLIP THE FOSSIL is one of these films and it really had me hooked.

Written and directed by Garth Donovan, PHILLIP THE FOSSIL starts out presenting Phillip as a really despicable, unlikable main character. As the story progresses, the audience begins to see a more mature, perhaps even slightly enlightened version of the man hidden just beneath his macho exterior.

The story also follows two other male characters, whose stories intermingle with and have great influence on Phillip’s story. Phillip’s friend Nick (Nick Dellaroca) is a soldier returned home from war, struggling with the experience of being sent overseas to kill other human beings, never quite sure how to differentiate between the good guys and the bad guys.

Sully (J.R. Killegrew) is less of a friend and more of an acquaintance and client to Phillip’s casual, small-scale drug peddling, focused primarily on steroids. Sully is a driven young man, passionate and desperate to bulk up as a way to ensure his place at the top of the football game. As his passion overtakes his sensibility, Sully increasingly becomes detached from his life, throwing away a relationship with Summer (Angela Pagliarulo) and creating tension between himself and his steroids supplier as a result of Summer’s rebound with Phillip.

The women of PHILLIP THE FOSSIL play primarily a role of beacons for the male characters, indirectly influencing their decisions. Summer is primarily a negative influence, while Julie (Ann Palica) serves as a positive reinforcement of the man that Phillip truly wants to become. The film is a compelling story of the male psyche, in three distinctly but closely connected manifestations of fear and insecurity, all of which factor into Phillip’s metamorphosis.

PHILLIP THE FOSSIL gets in line with a relatively short list of films that include SLACKERS and KIDS. These are all films that delve deep into the interpersonal, social relationships between “common” realistic lives. The images are often extreme in the content, but only in the sense that these are images that feel like documentary footage. The films feel like they’re drawn from actual occurrences, facts and true stories.

The cinematography is grainy, handheld and rough for a reason. As a society, we’ve grown to exist within a reality that is heavily filtered through the lens, more comfortable and responsive to life as its digitally reproduced than we are to life as it truly is and occurs, in the moment. PHILLIP THE FOSSIL allows the audience an opportunity to capture these moments, freeze frame them in our minds and study them. It allows us to look at the less flattering sides of our selves as if we’re looking into a mirror.

Overall, PHILLIP THE FOSSIL creates characters whose lives are just as surreal as they are real, manifesting reactions that place the reality of life directly on a collision course with ridiculous nature of the characters actions. The film places a microscope on the characters’ lives and forces them to look more closely at what they are doing, how they are acting and what consequences can ultimately play out, for better or for worse.

Overall Rating: 3 out of 5 stars