At a critical moment in FREE RANGE/BALLAD ON APPROVING OF THE WORLD, Fred (Lauri Lagle) has his own poetry read back to him. ‘How do you not be exhausted when you think of all the food you’ve eaten, and all the food you have yet to eat… How to even stand upright without sinking down along the wall, into the concrete.’ As you might have guessed from this quote, Fred does not have a career as a motivational speaker. Ironically, however, it is this very scene that gets both our protagonist and the film motoring.
FREE RANGE/BALLAD ON APPROVING OF THE WORLD follows Fred and his relationship with his newly pregnant girlfriend, Susannah (Jaanika Arum). Wild and inconsiderate, Fred’s main hobbies revolve around consuming crippling amounts of alcohol. In sitting-rooms, in parks, on beaches, the juvenile poet doesn’t mind as long as it makes his vision blur and insides churn. But what of money and providing for his family-to-be? Jobs only provide an opportunity for mischief for the Estonian James Dean who topples boxes, spurns book offers, and even insults Terrence Malick in a brief stint as a film critic!! How dare he? Internal pressures mount as his relationship with Susannah deteriorates. A realisation dawns that change may be his only option.
Rarely has the philosophy of rejecting the common path seemed quite so righteous.
The immature slacker hitting the pains of real life is a common theme for film. Cinema just loves telling people to grow up. However, few present both the pleasure and pain of youth-in-revolt as well as FREE RANGE. Rarely has the philosophy of rejecting the common path seemed quite so righteous. Yet rarely has an individual’s anarchy been more agonizing to watch. The balance of the two is almost perfect. Fred, with his baby face, dishevelled hair and blood-shot eyes, is the perfect vehicle for sympathy. Even when torturing a poor tram driver, you can’t help but feel that he is the one that has the true inner pain. We long for the return of his few brief happy scenes, brilliantly indicated by director Veiko Ounpuu’s use of a bleached colour-scheme, artfully indicating Fred’s lazy longing for an idle mind.
FREE RANGE possibly lacks activity or plot points, but as a character study it is flawlessly acted and taken to its full conclusions. Get your woollen tank-tops out of the attic, never will they seem more cool than just after this Estonian adventure.
See FREE RANGE at the Cambridge Film Festival at 18.45 on 30 August and 1 September at 13.00
httpvh://youtu.be/GzOlw3nwkhs