Basically, The Trash is a very personal attempt by filmmaker
Douglas Reese, to figure out the enigma that was (and still is) his
mother, a woman who left her family to live with a trailerpark educated
abusive drugdealer, and later got her kids living with her again, moving
from one trailerpark to the other and sucking her children more and more
into their lifestyle. But she herself was not a happy woman, and it all
culminated in a suicide attempt - and not her first one ... Douglas
Reese was never a director who would follow filmmaking rules to the T, and
thus this documentary - made up from homemovie footage as well as
interviews with some of the involved and Reese himself talking to the
camera - doesn't look like a typical documentary, as it uses many a visual
trick to make rather mundane scenes more interesting (without
misrepresenting them). Plus, while the film might not come to any ultimate
solution, it's clear the topic is very personal and for Reese it's
probably as much about finding himself as it's about learning more about
his mother - as is evidenced in a deep-felt monologue in which Reese,
welled up tears, talks about his frustrations about a movie project of his
that simply doesn't pan out. Now whether you're following Douglas Reese,
amateur auteur, of have never heard of him, this is a touching
documentary.
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