Below is the first trailer for David Gordon Green’s MANGLEHORN, albeit with French subtitles. You’ll quickly realize that either the art above or the trailer below is totally misleading (spoiler: it’s the poster).
The trailer gives us a glimpse into the title character, played by Al Pacino, as he shuffles around Austin, works his thankless lockpicking job, and mutters about his long-lost love, Clara, as the world continues to spin around him indifferently. We also see him interact with the three central supporting characters: Holly Hunter as a friendly bank teller, Chris Messina as his money shark son, and Harmony Korine (yes, that Harmony Korine) as a local with a long, reverent relationship with Manglehorn.
I saw the film at SXSW (my thoughts here), and liked the sad, melancholic film, though not quite as much as Gordon Green’s previous film, JOE. The trailer gets across the introspective, character-based nature of the film, and highlights Pacino’s central performance, while glossing over the more surreal elements which I found somewhat arbitrary and out of place. They did a good job of conveying Manglehorn’s soft-spoken awkwardness; there is no DEVIL’S ADVOCATE-style showboating here, just the subtle Pacino with the big, vulnerable eyes and uncertain posture that made him a megastar in the ‘70s.
I’m wondering if Pacino’s presence will give this a bigger stateside release than JOE or Pacino’s own recent THE HUMBLING (a similar, if far less affecting film). Either way, fans of either the actor or the director should find plenty rewarding about the low-key, character-centric MANGLEHORN, and I think this trailer displays that fairly well.
MANGLEHORN unlocks his heart (you see what I did there?) on June 19th
