By Eric Kohn

It is Fine! Everything is Fine.
Directed by Hellion Crispin Glover


If Crispin Glover made his latest experimental odyssey to satisfy his own grotesque dreams, it would be easy to bemoan the senselessly twisted vision as it appears in the plot. But IT IS FINE! Everything is Fine, the second entry in Glover’s “It” trilogy (preceded by What is It? in 2005) derives a nightmarish sexual fantasy straight from the source.

Steven C. Cooper, the writer of the movie and its star, plays a middle-aged man hindered by advanced cerebral palsy and desperate to find love—which more or less describes Cooper’s own life prior to his death shortly before completion of the production, although his character’s turn as a serial killer is certainly a fabrication. Shot with a surrealistic style that includes rear projection and vivid color schemes, IT IS FINE! tracks the wheelchair-bound protagonist’s attempt to romance an older woman (Margit Carstensen, a veteran of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s oeuvre) followed by his murderous rampage when she breaks his heart. Scrunched up, immobile and virtually impossible to understand, Cooper doesn’t perform; he soaks up the screen. His performance is an immersive feat, but that speaks mostly to the gimmick of the movie rather than its creative merits.

On the movie’s website, Cooper posthumously states that the project aims to “show that these people can have feelings, too…and when circumstances become more than they can take, they too can go over the edge.” That much comes through with plenty of unsettling resonance, but it doesn’t quite explain the distorted aesthetic. IT IS FINE! (an awkward title that assures you everything is not fine) succeeds at creating an otherworldly exploration of morbidity in the vein of Eraserhead. Glover and co-director David Brothers undoubtedly play a role in the cultivation of the pervasive weirdness. When explicit sex comes into the equation of the plot (Cooper’s character has sex with multiple women before strangling them), it forces viewers to question authorial intent.

Conceptually, the merits of the process are apparent: Just as What is It? gave actors with Down Syndrome a chance to indulge in creativity, IT IS FINE! allows an outsider’s plight to define the mood and give significance to the art. Yet it’s hard to take that endeavor seriously when the movie operates under the guise of exploitation. Stewart comes across as an object of pity, but his descent into madness doesn’t underscore his difficulties. It takes advantage of them.

IT IS FINE! screens this week at IFC Center, where Glover will present it each night with one of his trademark slide shows. These introductory sequences, culled from material in his self-published books, don’t have much to do with the film portion of the evening, but they work as a sort of inauguration into his brand of crazy. Viewed in light of Glover’s performance as the monstrous Grendel in the quasi-animated feature Beowolf in theaters now, IT IS FINE! speaks to Glover’s intent to study the components of nature that are typically perceived as shocking or alienated. He doesn’t explain them as much as force them to the center of the stage.