Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus Blu-ray Movie Review

Mescaline, Feminine

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater November 21, 2013

Let's get this out of the way up front: It's quite possible that you will hate the two protagonists of Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus, played by Arrested Development's Michael Cera and former child star Gaby Hoffmann. Or, at the very least, you'll hate one of them and be endlessly annoyed with the other. But—and this is a huge but, so hold on for a second before clicking right out of this review—these character are obnoxious by design, and their oversized egos serve to mask insecurities, uncertainties, and old wounds that have never healed. When the film finally strips them of their guards, it makes the entire journey worthwhile.

And Crystal Fairy is a journey. Or, a trip, rather—in two senses—following a pair of privileged American gringos and three Chilean brothers as they travel across the Atacama desert in search of a mescaline high derived from the "magical cactus" of the title. The film was directed by Sebastián Silva (The Maid) almost on a lark; it was shot handheld, nearly entirely improvised, and made in eight days while Silva was waiting to begin production on his next movie, the more complex psychological thriller, Magic Magic (also starring Cera and released this year). Consequently, the film feels spontaneous in ways good and bad, but mostly good. It's South American mumblecore—low-key and D.I.Y., conversational and oh-so- awkward.

Crystal Fairy

I'm going to go ahead and say that Michael Cera's character, Jamie, is the most obnoxious character I've seen on screen this year, to the extent that it veers into comedy. (Which is good, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to stand him.) He's basically a drug tourist in Chile, young and privileged enough to drift aimlessly from one high to the next. We're introduced to him at a party where he complains about the quality of the cocaine he's had in the country and talks out of his ass to anyone who will listen about Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception. He fancies himself erudite and worldly—a jet-setting drug culture connoisseur—but he's really just a skinny try-hard rich kid with something to prove and nothing to say.

At the party, Jaime approaches a girl flailing on the dance floor to kindly inform her that she's "embarrassing herself." This is Crystal Fairy (Hoffman), a fellow American traveler, and she's every bit as loopy as her name implies. She's a hippyish Earth Mother type, comfortable naked in front of others— there's a good reason Jaime eventually starts calling her "Crystal Hairy"—and yet unable to bare her soul. Instead, she drivels on and on in meaningless psychobabble, like "I'm thinking we should do a little karmic cleansing" and "we've got to work hard to unleash that ancient voice of consciousness" and "those women, they were, like, the true expression of Kali." (That last one after she nearly gets beaten up by some angry villagers who won't take a drawing as payment. Only Picasso could pull that one off, and Crystal is no Picasso.) She is kind-hearted, and you do get the feeling that she believes most of her own New Age-y bluster—like her obsession with the impending end of the Mayan calendar—but her eye-rolling kookiness is off the charts. You wouldn't want to be trapped in a crowded SUV with her on a long road trip through the middle of nowhere.

But, of course, that's exactly what happens. In a stoned stupor, Jaime invites Crystal along for a drive out to the coast with his roommate, Champa, and Champa's younger brothers, Lel and Pilo. (Played respectively—and with amateur realism—by Juan Andrés, José Miguel, and Augustín Silva, the director's real-life siblings.) Crystal's inclusion throws off the boys-only group dynamic in ways that are funny and honest, but while the three brothers roll with the punches and gradually accept and even welcome her presence, Jaime regards her with a cruel antipathy. He's got a carefully constructed plan about how they're going to find and buy a San Pedro cactus from some locals, cook up a batch mescaline on the beach, and trip their brains out under the stars, but Crystal's non-stop, take-charge suggestions and tangents put him in a agitated mood. And when it comes to doing drugs with friends, mood is everything.

Like most road movies, Crystal Fairy rolls along from one incident to the next, the characters changing as subtly as the scenery. That old "the journey is more important than the destination" chestnut. But something important does happen at the group's destination, a gorgeous stretch of coastline at the bleeding edge of the desert, where the draining, combined force of drugs and sunburn and sand finally opens the characters—Jaime and Crystal in particular—to confronting their inner-selves. For Crystal, it's the sudden ability to stop with the bullshit and reveal who she really is; for Jaime, it's the blinding, enlightenment-like experience of true empathy for the first time. For both of them, it's less a transformation than a catalyst for a potential transformation down the road, but it's powerful nonetheless, leaving us with a different perspective on these two lost and broken people.

Make no mistake, this is definitely a "first-world problems" kind of film, populated with characters who can clearly afford to have existential crises on a beautiful South American beach. But Silva plays around with this notion too; he validates the legitimacy of Crystal and Jaime's cathartic experience, but he's not above poking a little fun at how ridiculous they can be en route. This is a comedy after all, one that might be read as a satirizing of special- snowflake Millennial self-importance. It's uncomfortable because, for its target audience, it cuts through the posturing and gets at the truth—that we're all faking-it-till-we-make-it to some extent, that we're all confused and unsure of ourselves and afraid of being vulnerable.

Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Crystal Fairy was made on the fly, shot digitally with a Red EPIC camera in natural light, on location, following the movements of the actors. (And not the other way around, with the actors trying to hit predetermined marks.) First-time DP Cristián Petit-Laurent must've had quite a challenge—and there are times when he struggles to keep the focus where it should be— but his style is every bit as spontaneous as the film itself. Sure, there are some blown-out highlights and some moments of softness when the actors slip in and out of the focus plane, but this is all part of Crystal Fairy's improvisational style. IFC's 1080p/AVC-encoded Blu-ray does nothing to detract from the experience. The noise that's present is almost certainly inherent to the source footage—do note that there is a lot of noise in all but the brightest scenes—and there are no major compression issues or other concerns. The film's color grading nails the hot, dry vibe of the desert, looking almost bleached at times—though, thankfully, not to the extent of something like Three Kings—and when the subject is in focus, there's plenty of high definition detail and texture in the image.

Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

IFC's Blu-ray features two audio options, a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround mix and an uncompressed Linear PCM 2.0 stereo track. Both suit the quiet, dialogue-driven film just fine. Of course, the multichannel offering opens things up a bit with a modest amount of rear-channel activity—party ambience, desert wind, crashing waves, surround-sound orchestration—but nothing you'd really miss if you only have a stereo-capable home theater system. In both tracks, the scored and incidental music has good presence and clarity, and the characters' conversations are always balanced well in the mix and easy to understand. No issues here. The disc also includes optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles.

Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes (HD, 4:33): A quick EPK-style promo featuring clips from the film and interviews with Gaby Hoffman, Michael Cera, and Sebastian Silva.
• Trailer (HD, 2:23)

Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus is a slight but welcome departure for Michael Cera, who normally plays a wimpy nebbish but here plays, well, an insufferable nebbish, an all-talk ass who uses drugs to escape the reality of his not-yet-meaningful existence. He's paired opposite Gaby Hoffmann—the child star of Field of Dreams—as a dippy New Ager who speaks in the kind of pseudo-profound jargon you might see written in the Papyrus font on the packaging at a hippy health-food store. Together they make for the most obnoxious onscreen couple this year, but don't let that put you off. Crystal Fairy, which won the directing award for dramatic world cinema at this year's Sundance festival, is an intimate road trip movie that takes these characters on a journey to redemption and release. I imagine this one will pop up on Netflix or similar streaming/download services shortly, but IFC's Blu-ray release—with its solid picture and sound quality—is your best bet if you'd like to own the film. Recommended.