Paradox is a 2018 musical drama about a group of outlaws search for a mountain treasure and experience the supernatural powers of a full moon.
Without a word to suggest whether Paradox, the feature film directing debut of acclaimed actress Daryl Hannah is even worth watching, it at least deserves a nod for its sheer creative absurdity. A singularly epic trippy musical odyssey that is as wildly uneven as it is weirdly engaging, this is no doubt unlike nearly anything you’ve likely seen before. Your taste in music, experimentation, and just plain patience will be the ultimate judge.
Set in an undetermined future where humanity has abandoned modern technology and reverted back to a time of horses, steam trains, and old west survival, we meet a gang on the frontier led by The Man in the Black Hat (Neil Young), whom seems to have some connection with the moon. They are scavengers of sorts, rooting around for relics of the past, these being things we take for granted today, such as smartphones, game controllers, and computer keyboards (literally as the soundtrack plays poetic verses like ‘diggin’ in the dirt’). These trinkets come to have some importance in the end, though not hardly with the impact we’d hope. The group are a ragtag clan of all ages and personalities, playing poker-esque games and sitting around campfires while their leader strums a guitar in a steel pipe chair on his own. Occasionally, things happen, such a passing train and a tepid bank heist, though not much else. Mostly the Black Hat just kinda stares and mutters eccentricities until the music kicks in.
It’s probably purposefully meant to be ambiguous, with absolutely no obvious cohesive story to follow, Hannah seemingly pointing her handheld camera at random people and various era-centric things and stitching them together as acoustic Young tunes rattle in the background. Some of it is really hard to wrap your head around as to why it is there in the first place. The cook repeats himself a bit of raspy wisdom every time he serves up a meal, men drop prose relating love to flatulence, and the Black Hat simply looks on, strumming away.
Turns out there is still electricity, the clan coming together to put on a few shows, with Young taking the stage under a big top white tent, the film suddenly morphing into a kind of concert video, which might be what this really is, a 70-minute high-concept music video. Men tie and handcuff themselves to chairs to watch the show, which seems pointless at first until you realize there is a method to their madness and being tethered to the ground is kind of essential.
Granted, for any fan of Young – of which I heartily count myself – this will have rewards, even if one must travel through long awkward moments of surreal metaphorical machinations to get them. Young is still in great voice and any chance to hear him chime one out is almost worth anything, even watching men using outhouses with nothing but sandpaper. Young surrounds himself with only the best, and while his concert segments (yes, there is a moment where he’s playing to a packed outdoor audience, cut from his 2016 Desert Trip performance) are unfortunately far less than even half the film, they at least breathe a lot of life into the affair.
Willie Nelson briefly shows up at one point in the story as does a bus full of women with some bountiful baskets in the last stages of the movie, and there is a sense that the separation of the genres has some genuine purpose (though I honestly couldn’t stop thinking of the ending to Dumb and Dumber). Still, there is a frustrating looseness to it all where even the most dedicated of music lovers will question its intent. I’ve got nothing against the imagery or even the somewhat romantic undertones bristling under it, some of it rather sweet, but this is just too muddled to really make it matter. It’s a highly personal film made by and for the people involved, never really inviting us in as it should. As a concert film, it has several good moments that almost give it a silver lining, but as anything else, it is strictly head-scratching.