There are such creators, that one of their creations is enough to tie our soul to them and want to follow everything they do. For Sean Penn, it is the film “To the End of the World” that he directed in 2007, one of the most beautiful and significant films of this millennium. Although Penn is famous as an actor – the total and intense type, for which his roles in “Mystic River” and “Milk” won him two Oscars – but Penn the director is much more interesting. Since “The Indian Runner” (1991) and “The Keeper of the Road” (1995) he directs every few years sad and heartbreaking ballads about people living on the fringes of America. For Penn the American dream does not exist, there is only a life full of hardships, suffering and injustice. Penn’s films as a director are uneven, but there is a line of melancholy in all of them, because Penn directs films about messed up people. “To the End of the World” revealed not only the social side of Penn, who told of a boy who was fed up with capitalist and materialistic America and searched in vain for an alternative, but presented him for the first time as a poetic creator, who manages to admire the beauty of his country, even if he criticizes its people, its guests and its reality.
Recently, his last film as a director, “Life on the Run”, which was screened at the Cannes Film Festival more than a year ago, quietly crept onto the cinema screens and was not well received. Unfortunately, rightfully so. This is Penn’s weakest film. It’s easy to see what drew Penn to this story: it’s the true story of a father and daughter, and the film provided Penn with an opportunity to give his first lead role to his eldest daughter Dylan Penn (from his tumultuous relationship and breakup with Robin Wright). His son, Hopper Penn, plays a smaller role. But the more significant news is that this is Penn’s first film as a director in which he casts himself as an actor. This makes “Haim on the Run” a family project, where the father’s face appears alongside his two children, in a film about a dysfunctional father and the daughter who has to survive growing up alongside her explosive parents.
This is the true story of the journalist and author Jennifer Vogel, whose father was accused in one of the largest bill counterfeiting scandals in American history. Unfortunately, the film almost ignores the life of crime, and thus prevents the film from moments of tension and action and focuses on the memories of Vogel’s childhood in Minnesota, where her father’s volatile nature, and his tendencies to exaggerate and lie, actually made her childhood happy and unpredictable, until her parents separated, her father left and her mother became an alcoholic .
Can a true story be cliche? For Vogel, of course not. Everything that happened was unique, real and scarred for her. Vogel experienced an authentic life. But on the way to the screen, and in front of the eyes of an audience that has already seen several films based on true stories, every scene looks familiar, trite and borrowed from films, moments from films that we have already seen. Every scene is a predictable warning light for a bleak future. The moments of euphoria with an impulsive father who just wants to make a life with his children, without taking responsibility for his actions, which will lead to tears because of a family falling apart, a disturbing stepfather and youths that are being lost. To the used content should be added the disappointing recognition that Dylan Penn is unable to carry the film on her shoulders, not even under the guidance of her father from the other side of the camera. Although both of her parents are excellent actors, Dylan is not up to the burden required of her to portray a young woman who needs to run away from her parents in order to survive.
Still, there is something touching about this film. Maybe it’s the connection between the creators and the characters and the closing of the circle between them. Dylan was born the year Penn launched his directing career, and here they meet for the first time on screen. Without knowing the story of their shared life, it is hard not to wonder if the film is not an opportunity for the father to let his daughter tell the story of her life in the shadow of two parents who lived unconventional lives, parents who separated and returned, married and divorced, and created quite a few headlines until their final separation in 2010. The thought that the film has some personal touch for the Penn family, and a desire to process the childhood years through psychodramatic means, gives the film additional weight. Also, Penn returns and does a good job of depicting life in the great outdoors (the film, set in Minnesota, was actually shot in Canada), giving his characters moments of grace but also danger. Through the camera of Daniel Moder (Julia Roberts’ partner) all childhood moments, alongside endless wheat fields and blue lakes, look photogenic. Add to that the fact that the film contains an excellent soundtrack (including new songs by Eddie Vedder) and you get a film whose beginning promises to be a poetic rural film with country flavors, before the melodrama takes over the story and the jumpy and uneven editing jumps the story too quickly to the moments when the characters suffer, rather than when they find comfort.