Product Description

Forced to smuggle whiskey in an attempt to save his family, Quebec Bill (Kris Kristofferson) and his son will embark on an unforgettable trip. This wild journey through vast reaches of the wilderness will lead them to discover a haunted and elusive past. Disappearances features Kris Kristofferson's greatest performance to date in this beautifully shot western adventure.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34520 in DVD
• Brand: GAIAM AMERICAS
• Released on: 2007-07-03
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 103 minutes

Features

• Forced to smuggle whiskey in an attempt to save his family, Quebec Bill (Kris Kristofferson) and his son will embark on an unforgettable trip. This wild journey through vast reaches of the wilderness will lead them to discover a haunted and elusive past. Disappearances features Kris Kristofferson's greatest performance to date in this beautifully shot western adventure. Runtime: 103 mins

Customer Reviews

Disappearances worth sticking around for
What a delight! In a market where we excuse bad lines delivered by flat
characters for a few dozen more explosions, dazzling special effects, and everything else twenty million dollars can buy, I love Disappearances for its charm, its clever script handled by a well-appointed cast, and its beautiful photography.

The movie is thoroughly rural. Like the countryside where it was
produced, Disappearances unfolds itself slowly but magnificently. Do not expect to find your heart in your throat for two hours, followed by a climactic, tidy resolution to the cosmos. Disappearances tells a story of
father and son, and it is rightly more of a process than a particular event. In that regard, the plot development is stylistically closer to eastern European cinema than it is to its American peers.

With only a couple hitches (a couple characters are more prop than talent), Disappearances' strong symbiosis of script and talent is the film's greatest offering. The superb synergy of Farmer and McDermott with the others, the perfect casting of Sanderson to character, and an excellent performance by Kristofferson, have me pinching myself at times to remember these people aren't actually family. Disappearances ventures further, or more believably, into the psychology of its main characters than many American films dare go.

If the fact that Jay Craven was ambitious with his budget shows at times during Disappearances, it becomes more of a mark of honor than a detractor. This film is the antithesis to the contemporary action blockbuster. The film moves slowly at times, and the action is not always plausible, but the characters are enchanting. Besides, our suspension of disbelief in the cinema is an aesthetic choice above all, and I appreciate the way Disappearances, in its fusion of magic realism and frontier, challenges me to look at movies anew.

Proof or Poof!
`Disappearances' is an enigma. Taking place during the Great Depression in Vermont, we get an outlaw caper and a tale of the supernatural. The movie is more worthy than not, but when it relies on the former, we get captivating adventure; when it relies on the latter we get more mood than substance. Kris Kristopherson, featuring one of his best performances in memory, leads an assorted cast through peril during the Prohibition.

Quebec's the name and making ends meet is the game. As his family farm loses collaterol and the money to buy hay for the animals, Quebec's stubbornness makes things even harder on the rest of family. After he runs out of honest means, he decides to go back to smuggling whiskey from across the border. The women folk don't like him much, but his son "Wild Bill" is the apple of his eye. Just like his own father, Quebec looks to his next of kin to be as much of a rascal as he is. For schooling, "Wild Bill" has elder Aunt Cordelia (Genevieve Bluteau) to rely upon at the school house. She tries to rear him as far away from his father and always warns him, "Always determine what your father would do in a situation. Then do the opposite." 'Paradise Lost' is a staple piece of literature she uses, but her actual presence seems to draw more from Uncle Henry (Gary Farmer), a Native American who runs a car dealership in town. As reluctant as everyone else, Henry agrees to come along and let him use his own precious vehicle. Along the way we first get a load of ponderous conversation that's meant to rationalize the whole deal, but the sets and costumes transport us nicely enough in a beautiful bar scene. Before we can judge the prize, we have to get a taste first afterall. And so does Bill. After they reach the border, the tension and ominous atmosphere rises as we go through the woods in the dark. They soon come across French Canadians, mounted police, and a group of monks who have their own angle on the whiskey trade.

`Disappearances' is an enjoyable trek to Vermont in 1932. It has the whole Western feel that isn't overdone or stale, but the causality of the supernatural doesn't seem to be planted well enough. Early on we get a cemetery scene where Aunt Cordelia explains to Bill that men just disappear. She whispers it, but we don't get much of an explanation. Later, at key moments she shows up to Bill along the trail. Is she a ghost? Is she a vision? We're not sure, except she gives Bill good advice. She's not all that different than Obi-Wan Kenobi, except at one point she brings a shotgun and becomes someone to be reckoned with. The effect is nicely done. We have a Native American feel as a white owl shows up as a foreboding of ill fortune, but it's not that consistent. At one point they have a train adventure; the next it disappears. Something Quebec acknowledges as well as Bill. Now it becomes puzzling. Is the movie a mood piece? Or is it a real cult adventure? If so what are the rules?

`Disappearances' is a well crafted Western (okay, Eastern) adventure that has enough elements to please, but it leaves all too many questions and inconsistencies to leave with the audience. When it's real, writer/director Jay Craven gives us a beautifully crafted film. When it's not, it's everyone for him(her)self.

North Country personified
I was delighted to find this movie the other day and snatched it up immediately. DISAPPEARANCES, a book by my favourite author, Howard Frank Mosher, was enough of a draw; and I knew without looking that it had to have been filmed by Jay Craven, who has an innate understanding of the proper way to handle stories by Mr. Mosher in film, having already done a credible job with WHERE THE RIVERS RUN NORTH.

I had the distinct and unique pleasure of working for Jay Craven in the mid-80s and got a taste of the man's style and drive for correctness even back then, though I was but a lowly projectionist and all-around worker at the arts house of which he was the head. He does not go about a project without considering all the angles; he doesn't choose easy projects either, but ones that are filled with quirky, interesting individuals in every sense of that word. In DISAPPEARANCES, he hits the motherlode. As Quebec Bill, Kris Kristofferson plays his role with an enjoyment (dare I say joie de vivre) and energy that shows he was just having a dandy old time. Charlie McDermott, who portrays his young teenage son Wild Bill, brings a poignancy and depth of character that isn't often seen to this degree in an unknown young actor. He is phenomenal in this role, which is very much a father-son journey towards manhood and towards understanding each other, with a firm base to start of love and regard.

Quebec Bill is a fretfully reformed whiskey runner in this far-northern Vermont community known as Kingdom Common. He ran whiskey, his father ran whiskey, his grandfather ran whiskey. Risk and adventure are neither new to him nor against his current principles. In this late point of time, he has apparently been retired from his dubious occupation for some time, but as a farmer he has fallen on poverty, is feeding his cows potatoes in lieu of the barnful of hay that lightning burned down, and he convinces his womenfolk - his barely-seen wife Evangeline and his oddly powerful mother, played with intensity and style by Genevieve Bujold (we don't ever see enough of her, a great actress) - to allow Wild Bill to accompany him on one last whiskey smuggling run into and out of Canada. The supporting cast are fantastic - Gary Farmer (Powwow Highway) as Uncle Henry, and William Sanderson (Deadwood, among a multitude of other excellent character roles)as Rat Kinnison, a permanently uncertain participant in the events that unfold while being indispensible in certain areas of expertise. The chief bad guy, a French-Canadian called Carcajou, seems to be an odd mix of the French taunters in Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Rasputin, as it seems impossible to kill the guy off - but he fulfills a darker, sinister side, pursuing Wild Bill and his father relentlessly through the cold Northern territory to get his already-purloined whiskey back from them.

I am from this area, and watching this movie was like being there. The settings are superb, the characterizations are great (also loved Luis Guzman as the highly-improbable but hysterically right-on Brother Hilare); the one thing I might have toned back was Kris Kristofferson on fiddle. Even if I didn't play fiddle myself, his time doing so would have seemed contrived. I don't care for people impersonating an actual player but that's a very minor quibble. As far as fully enjoying the movie, I couldn't have been more involved. For the limited budget Jay Craven had, he made a helluva classy little movie.