Buster's Mal HeartIs regret born from the choices we make or the choices we don't? Buster's Mal Heart is a surreal thriller about a family man named Jonah (Rami Malek) who works nights as a concierge at a hotel near the mountains of Montana. It is also the story of "Buster" (also Rami Malek), a self-proclaimed "last free man", who raids the unoccupied vacation homes of the rich in the same mountains, and calls into radio talk shows, giving portents of doom about an apocalyptic event he calls the "Second Inversion". And there is the man in the boat, adrift at sea--also Rami Malek--sending messages in bottles, hoping to be rescued. Uncovering which--if any--of these iterations are real or fantasy is the mystery at the heart of Buster's Mal Heart.
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Buster's Mal Heart is about the amount of actual freedom we have in our lives, and whether that freedom goes hand in hand with happiness. Jonah enjoys the love of his wife, Marty (Kate Lyn Sheil), a born-again Christian, as well as his daughter, the exuberant Roxy (Sukha Belle Potter). Yet Jonah dreams of buying a parcel of land upon which to build a house, where he and his family can live off of the land, and be free from slaving away for someone else. Jonah's job is a soul-crushing one, consigned to the purgatorial realm of working in the middle of the night at an almost always vacant hotel. Jonah struggles to sleep during the day, deprived of the company of the immediate family he loves. He endures the condescension of Marty's mother, Pauline (Lin Shaye), who criticizes Jonah over petty things like teaching Roxy his native Spanish alongside English, while Jonah and Marty stay with her. After a suspicious, unnamed drifter (DJ Qualls) walks in and wants a room--refusing to offer any identification or even his name--Jonah begins to question his place in the world and his expectations of it. The drifter talks of grandiose things like conspiracies and cosmic events, and is sketchy and pushy. Jonah should know better than to entertain the ravings of such an unstable person, but Jonah longs for any kind of escape from his tedium. Jonah watches television in the middle of the night in his boredom, featuring manic public access programs that describe an event called the "Second Inversion", and that the universe resembles an apple with orifices at either end. It captures his attention, but each subsequent viewing is different, as though it were setting the stage for his existential schism to come. This splintering interpretation of reality is also a key motif in Buster's Mal Heart.
Time and reality are not absolute or linear in Buster's Mal Heart; one interpretation of the fractured narrative is that the film flashes back and forth between the "past" of Jonah and the "future" of his counterpart, "Buster". The two men are similar: they are both quiet, yet given to outbursts of anger when frustrated. Buster's name was given to him by the talk show hosts as a derisive insult, due to his apocalyptic ravings when he calls in, warning about the looming cosmic event. Buster calls other people on the phone--from phone sex operators to television mystics--as though he just wants to be heard, spreading his gospel far and wide. Buster is not a benevolent or selfless prophet, evidenced by his unlawful occupation of other people's homes, and his periodic and grotesque leavings for his unwitting hosts and the police tracking him. Like the drifter in Jonah's story, Buster describes himself as the "last free man", even though the defining characteristics of this self-applied moniker are never fully explained. Buster is "free" in the sense that he is without a job, living "off of the land" (and other people's prosperity), and has no obligations and no worries outside of being apprehended by the police. Buster is not a happy person; he isn't outright hostile, even when he is caught off guard when an elderly couple returns home while he is staying there. Buster ties them up with Christmas lights at the dinner table, and gently feeds them a delicious meal he has prepared for three. Buster doesn't converse with them at all; this could be due to guilt, confronted with his trespassing and theft of their food, but it also suggests that no matter how much he flees civilization, his past and memories haunt him wherever he runs. An early scene in Buster's Mal Heart shows Buster rearranging the photographs in one home so that they are hanging upside-down. This could represent that Buster's own life is upside-down, and his new life is an "inversion" of his prior existence.
The most mysterious of the tripartite iterations of Jonah/Buster is the one who is trapped out on the ocean. The film opens with an image of the sun and two figures facing each other flicker in and out of existence. The man in the boat bears an uncanny resemblance to Jesus Christ, with a long beard, thin face, and a cloth draped over his head. Each day on the boat is sunny, and the man struggles to keep himself alive by subsisting on his own urine. He writes desperate cries for help on ragged paper, which he packs into bottles that mysteriously appear, and tosses into the ocean. This whole scenario defies logic; for example, the man wakes up one day to find several frogs on his tiny raft. Where did they come from? Even if it were some divine plague rained down from on high, there is never a cloud in the sky, and no land anywhere in sight. This man speaks only in Spanish, unlike Jonah who also speaks English. Buster's Mal Heart avoids subtitles when characters speak in Spanish, making the language come across like a code or tongues for an audience that is not bilingual. This makes conversations like those between Jonah and Adelita (Teresa Yenque), the maid at the hotel, seem like private events, and the spoken language of the man on the boat becomes even more mysterious. The man on the boat is arguably the most "free"--of civilization, of people, and of the whole world. But he is also alone, starving, and relying on his will and fortune to survive--conditions that would break most men's sanity. It is even possible that the stories of Jonah and Buster might be figments of the imagination of the man on the boat; it is unlikely that the others would fantasize and equate "freedom" with being trapped on a boat in the middle of the ocean without hope of rescue.
Jonah's crisis in Buster's Mal Heart comes from the inability of his heart to consolidate what he believes he's entitled to in life versus what he has earned. Jonah comes home frustrated one morning, and has an argument with Marty about how he doesn't want to be trapped in the "machine" of society, working for a pittance and stuck being a "slave", while paying exorbitant rent for some measly apartment. He dreams bigger--but what does he really do that helps him achieve his dreams? Jonah's job at the hotel is reminiscent of Jack Torrance's in The Shining; even the hotel has the same semi-antiquated look and empty sense of isolation of the Overlook Hotel. Jonah's job amounts to standing in place and handing out keys--killing time. Is his job such a significant contribution to "society" as to warrant the kind of compensation that befits his lofty dream? To put it another way, Jonah doesn't really make the most of his time--he spends it doing pointless tasks, when he could be doing something more substantial. When the drifter comes into the picture, it is Jonah who suggests the idea of robbing the guests in the hotel to make some extra money, with the drifter as his accomplice. Jonah feels entitled to compensation for the anger he feels at his situation in life; this attitude of entitlement is also why Buster intrudes on the homes of the rich, living within them as though it were his. Jonah's life is out of balance because his expectations in life do not fit with his reality. This existential pain comes to him while he and the drifter are wasting time, throwing racquetballs around the indoor court. He talks about how he feels that his "heart wasn't made right", as the bouncing of the balls echo like the beating of his heart. Jonah adheres a picture of Marty and Roxy to his counter at work with a piece of Scotch tape, to help him focus on what matters in his universe--what is important in his heart. The drifter is like the devil that tempts him with the Apple of Eden--he even refers to this event as the fulcrum for the last "inversion" that altered the universe. Buster's Mal Heart is set in 1999, evidenced by periodic mentions of the paranoia-inducing "Y2K" threat, which Buster believes will coincide with the "Second Inversion". There is also a predominance of spiritual music throughout the film, speaking to the presence of God and faith. The question becomes whether Jonah/Buster has faith--in God, in people, or even in himself. Like Buster, the answer is often silence; or if not silence, a beating heart.
Recommended for: Fans of a surreal story about a man experiencing an existential crisis, trying to juggle freedom and happiness--two forces that forever seem diametrically opposed for him. Buster's Mal Heart challenges audiences with its non-linear narrative, and deals in feelings of powerlessness and regret that can be appreciated by many people in pointless jobs, feeling that they are incapable of escaping their various traps in life.
Time and reality are not absolute or linear in Buster's Mal Heart; one interpretation of the fractured narrative is that the film flashes back and forth between the "past" of Jonah and the "future" of his counterpart, "Buster". The two men are similar: they are both quiet, yet given to outbursts of anger when frustrated. Buster's name was given to him by the talk show hosts as a derisive insult, due to his apocalyptic ravings when he calls in, warning about the looming cosmic event. Buster calls other people on the phone--from phone sex operators to television mystics--as though he just wants to be heard, spreading his gospel far and wide. Buster is not a benevolent or selfless prophet, evidenced by his unlawful occupation of other people's homes, and his periodic and grotesque leavings for his unwitting hosts and the police tracking him. Like the drifter in Jonah's story, Buster describes himself as the "last free man", even though the defining characteristics of this self-applied moniker are never fully explained. Buster is "free" in the sense that he is without a job, living "off of the land" (and other people's prosperity), and has no obligations and no worries outside of being apprehended by the police. Buster is not a happy person; he isn't outright hostile, even when he is caught off guard when an elderly couple returns home while he is staying there. Buster ties them up with Christmas lights at the dinner table, and gently feeds them a delicious meal he has prepared for three. Buster doesn't converse with them at all; this could be due to guilt, confronted with his trespassing and theft of their food, but it also suggests that no matter how much he flees civilization, his past and memories haunt him wherever he runs. An early scene in Buster's Mal Heart shows Buster rearranging the photographs in one home so that they are hanging upside-down. This could represent that Buster's own life is upside-down, and his new life is an "inversion" of his prior existence.
The most mysterious of the tripartite iterations of Jonah/Buster is the one who is trapped out on the ocean. The film opens with an image of the sun and two figures facing each other flicker in and out of existence. The man in the boat bears an uncanny resemblance to Jesus Christ, with a long beard, thin face, and a cloth draped over his head. Each day on the boat is sunny, and the man struggles to keep himself alive by subsisting on his own urine. He writes desperate cries for help on ragged paper, which he packs into bottles that mysteriously appear, and tosses into the ocean. This whole scenario defies logic; for example, the man wakes up one day to find several frogs on his tiny raft. Where did they come from? Even if it were some divine plague rained down from on high, there is never a cloud in the sky, and no land anywhere in sight. This man speaks only in Spanish, unlike Jonah who also speaks English. Buster's Mal Heart avoids subtitles when characters speak in Spanish, making the language come across like a code or tongues for an audience that is not bilingual. This makes conversations like those between Jonah and Adelita (Teresa Yenque), the maid at the hotel, seem like private events, and the spoken language of the man on the boat becomes even more mysterious. The man on the boat is arguably the most "free"--of civilization, of people, and of the whole world. But he is also alone, starving, and relying on his will and fortune to survive--conditions that would break most men's sanity. It is even possible that the stories of Jonah and Buster might be figments of the imagination of the man on the boat; it is unlikely that the others would fantasize and equate "freedom" with being trapped on a boat in the middle of the ocean without hope of rescue.
Jonah's crisis in Buster's Mal Heart comes from the inability of his heart to consolidate what he believes he's entitled to in life versus what he has earned. Jonah comes home frustrated one morning, and has an argument with Marty about how he doesn't want to be trapped in the "machine" of society, working for a pittance and stuck being a "slave", while paying exorbitant rent for some measly apartment. He dreams bigger--but what does he really do that helps him achieve his dreams? Jonah's job at the hotel is reminiscent of Jack Torrance's in The Shining; even the hotel has the same semi-antiquated look and empty sense of isolation of the Overlook Hotel. Jonah's job amounts to standing in place and handing out keys--killing time. Is his job such a significant contribution to "society" as to warrant the kind of compensation that befits his lofty dream? To put it another way, Jonah doesn't really make the most of his time--he spends it doing pointless tasks, when he could be doing something more substantial. When the drifter comes into the picture, it is Jonah who suggests the idea of robbing the guests in the hotel to make some extra money, with the drifter as his accomplice. Jonah feels entitled to compensation for the anger he feels at his situation in life; this attitude of entitlement is also why Buster intrudes on the homes of the rich, living within them as though it were his. Jonah's life is out of balance because his expectations in life do not fit with his reality. This existential pain comes to him while he and the drifter are wasting time, throwing racquetballs around the indoor court. He talks about how he feels that his "heart wasn't made right", as the bouncing of the balls echo like the beating of his heart. Jonah adheres a picture of Marty and Roxy to his counter at work with a piece of Scotch tape, to help him focus on what matters in his universe--what is important in his heart. The drifter is like the devil that tempts him with the Apple of Eden--he even refers to this event as the fulcrum for the last "inversion" that altered the universe. Buster's Mal Heart is set in 1999, evidenced by periodic mentions of the paranoia-inducing "Y2K" threat, which Buster believes will coincide with the "Second Inversion". There is also a predominance of spiritual music throughout the film, speaking to the presence of God and faith. The question becomes whether Jonah/Buster has faith--in God, in people, or even in himself. Like Buster, the answer is often silence; or if not silence, a beating heart.
Recommended for: Fans of a surreal story about a man experiencing an existential crisis, trying to juggle freedom and happiness--two forces that forever seem diametrically opposed for him. Buster's Mal Heart challenges audiences with its non-linear narrative, and deals in feelings of powerlessness and regret that can be appreciated by many people in pointless jobs, feeling that they are incapable of escaping their various traps in life.