Review: In ‘Vulcanizadora,’ the limits of guilt and anxiety are probed

The sardonic meme phrase “Are men okay?” gets a bleakly amusing yet quietly devastating workover in Joel Potrykus’ “Vulcanizadora,” about a pair of downtrodden dudes on a disturbingly consequential journey into the woods near Lake Michigan. In its focused glimpse into a strange, funny-sad friendship, it’s almost mesmerizingly nonjudgmental as it treks to a very dark place.

That doesn’t mean “Vulcanizadora” lacks a point of view. Potrykus’ cinematic playground — forged in small-scale curios like “Buzzard” and “Relaxer” — is the stagnant air of failure surrounding a certain kind of shameless, embittered, immature guy for whom life’s richest challenges are video-game levels and petty pranks. Mel Brooks famously contextualized our perspective on misfortune when he said, “Tragedy is when I cut my finger, comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” But Potrykus, whose oeuvre of slacker micro-apocalypses has become as distinctive as anyone’s in the DIY indie realm, seems intent on finding a discomfiting if poetic space between those poles, where your snickers might be colored by a slight repugnance, and at times you’ll stare as you would at a half-squished insect still trying to move.

“Vulcanizadora” is a 10-years-later follow-up to “Buzzard” — because the word “sequel” almost sounds too materialistically mercenary for such lo-fi fare as this. But knowing that may not be necessary, because as the story’s humans come into view from the leafy serenity of Adam J. Minnick’s 16mm cinematography, it doesn’t take long to grasp who Marty, played by longtime Potrykus collaborator Joshua Burge, and motormouth Derek (Potrykus) are: inexperienced campers, committed weirdos, close pals, stunted juveniles and men on a mission to fulfill an obligation they’ve made to each other.

The details of their pact aren’t initially clear, but the journey seems tilted toward appeasing Derek’s junky pleasures: bottle rockets, martial arts play-acting, swigging Jaeger from a canteen, porn mags. Marty, meanwhile, hollow-eyed and churlish about straying from their objective, seems haunted with guilt after a recent stint in jail for setting a building on fire. (Marty’s deteriorating life of small-time criminality was the loose narrative of “Buzzard,” although it’s best known for a long take of him messily eating spaghetti that could almost qualify as dirtbag performance art.)

Burge is a singular screen presence, like an R. Crumb misfit made real, and it’s almost touching how much faith Potrykus has in the awkward majesty of staying on his face so that Marty’s sour desperation tips us over from wanting to laugh at him to feeling sorry for his misery. But Potrykus, whose character was mostly a punching bag in “Buzzard,” also gives himself a chance to make this a real two-hander when the vibrating Derek’s own regrets eventually come to the surface — he’s got a 5-year-old son he knows he’s ill-suited to be a real father to — and we see the lost man inside the arrested adolescent. Potrykus makes a psychologically revealing meal out of every nervous interjection of Derek’s until they become animalistic and eventually sorrowful.

Flush with emotion after expressing some of that deep-set pain and perhaps trying to stave off a no-turning-back reality, Derek tries to convince his friend he feels better getting everything out. But Marty’s right there to let him know that tomorrow he’ll feel bad all over again. And that feels real too, as if it were this fable’s slap-you-awake moral.

But then, on the lake’s gleaming shore, “Vulcanizadora” reveals its truest colors with a horrifying, absurd twist of fate for these two that, if not exactly unpredictable, kicks off a final act of smudgy, eccentric, farcical grace about the complicated bonds of friendship. The ending’s a downer, all right, but you might just smile too. Then feel bad about it. Then chuckle. Which is when you realize Potrykus has you right where he wants you.