Nuts!

SCREENED AT THE 2016 CHICAGO CRITICS FILM FESTIVAL: One of the reasons I love going to film festivals is because it's really the only time I can walk into a movie and have absolutely no idea what to expect. Thanks to social media and endless trailers and commercials gracing our TV and YouTube screens, the element of surprise when walking into a theatre is virtually gone, even with something like Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which caused a lot of my friends to log off of social media due to spoiler alerts. So when I got off of class about a month ago and walked over to Chicago's beautiful Music Box Theatre to see a movie called Nuts!, the title was honestly the only thing I knew about it (other than that it was likely going to be good, because it was in the Chicago Critics Film Festival in the first place).

And because of this, I am going to give as little plot synopsis in this review as I can. The absolute best way to see this film is how I saw it: knowing nothing. But for those who can't stand knowing nothing about a movie before spending $11 on it (and this film is worth every cent of your money), here's just the basic set-up: In the early 1920s, a doctor named John R. Brinkley opened up a health clinic in the small Kansas town of Milford and was very popular among the locals. One day, a man walked into Brinkley's clinic and said he was feeling "sexually weak" (you can take any guess as to what he's trying to imply). While standing there, Brinkley notices a pair of goats mating intensely on a farm across the street, and he jokingly suggests to the man that if he had a pair of "goat nuts" in him, he would have no problem with trying to please his wife. Much to his (and everyone else's) surprise, the man begs Brinkley to perform the operation, and (gasp!) it works!

Oh, and I should also mention that this is a documentary, meaning that John R. Brinkley existed and the events depicted in this movie did actually happen. Yes, goat gland transplantation to cure erectile dysfunction was an actual thing. But like I said, part of the experience of watching this movie is knowing as little as possible, so don't go Googling John R. Brinkley as you'll lose a considerable amount of enjoyment if you do. Because this film blind-sided me in virtually every sense of the word. How there hasn't been a movie on this guy sooner is astonishing, because his story is the very definition of stranger than fiction.

I haven't seen of director Penny Lane's other films (I plan on watching Our Nixon very soon, and yes, Penny Lane is her actual birth certificate name; see pennylaneismyrealname.com/faq), but she seems to have an amazing knack for taking these stranger-than-fiction stories and exposing them for every piece of bizarreness and eccentricity possible. In the hands of a lesser documentarian, this could have easily been just a bunch of talking heads giving a history lesson, and while there are some, she brilliantly utilizes beautiful idiosyncratic animation to tell this story in a way that is at once perfect for the story and entertaining for everyone watching it. Seriously, I don't know who these animators are, but they deserve some kind of filmmaking/animating medal for their contributions to this movie (they won't get Oscars, but they should).

But even more brilliant than the animation in telling this story is the structure she uses. While it's very hard to talk about this without getting into spoilers, all I'll say is that it's one of the most brilliant uses of structure that I've ever seen in a documentary (right up with Kurt Kuenne's Dear Zachary; which if you haven't seen that, please do yourself a favor) and it punches you right in the gut once you hit the third act. It's like it all of a sudden goes from this bizarre Charlie Kaufman meets P.T. Anderson story to Wes Anderson's version of There Will Be Blood in the best possible way. And if that sounds like too vague of a description for you, that's kind of the intention. No amount of metaphors or analogies can do any sort of justice to the third act of this movie (not even a Google search on Mr. Brinkley, which I beg you not to do until after you see the film), as it is one of the most amazing feats of documentary filmmaking I've ever seen.  

Since I can't say much else without giving stuff away, just please seek this out wherever you can. The thing that sucks about a lot of the movies that I see at the Chicago Critics Film Festival is that (with a few exceptions) most of these films just get dumped on VOD if they get a release at all. I know it has a NY/LA release now, but I'm praying that it gets into a few Chicago area theatres and then a likely Netflix release (since I know that Penny Lane's Our Nixon is on there). But I can safely that this is easily in the top 5 documentaries that I've ever seen. It's a beautiful, gut-punching, hilarious, and bizarrely horrifying documentary with an important and I-can't-believe-I've-never-heard-of-this true story and it needs to be seen by everyone.

(For my C.P. friends, just pretend these are popcorn kernels). ;)