Anybody who has ever studied theatre at a proper degree has sat by means of limitless hours of unusual “workshops,” which may embrace something from shifting round like an inflatable man outdoors of a automobile dealership to “get in contact along with your physique” or trauma dumping your most painful recollections to an entire stranger in 90 second intervals. Relying on how they’re executed and who you ask, the workout routines might be something from both life-affirming remedy to utter nonsense. However the one factor everybody ought to agree on is that these workshops most likely shouldn’t ever be led by Shia LaBeouf.
Should you’re one of many outliers who needs to dispute that assertion, contemplate watching “Slauson Rec.” The brand new documentary captures the polarizing actor’s try to start out a free instructional theatre firm in South Central Los Angeles in 2018. What started with a collection of free performing workshops on Saturdays for deprived college students and adults steadily concerned right into a extra formidable affair, with LaBeouf ultimately corralling dozens of non-professional actors for a grueling rehearsal course of in the course of the coronary heart of the Covid-19 pandemic in an try to stage an experimental drive-in theatre manufacturing. Directed by firm member Leo Lewis O’Neil (and largely financed by LaBeouf himself), the documentary begins as a movie about celeb altruism earlier than devolving right into a portrait of a deeply unstable man hitting all-time low.
If there’s one phrase to explain the LaBeouf we see at his preliminary workshops on the Slauson Rec Heart, it could be intense. He paces by means of the health club with a manic depth as he leads massive teams of Angelenos by means of unorthodox performing workout routines, typically spouting daring declarations like “Porn is fascinating to me as a result of they truly fuck!” The power could be off-putting to some, however his simple ardour and eccentricity endeared him to a lot of his college students.
However as time goes on, LaBeouf and his followers start to yearn for a extra formidable undertaking. The group’s early performances had been largely devised, non-narrative exhibits that primarily consisted of actors wiggling their our bodies round and saying no matter popped into their heads. However the restlessness of 2020 prompts LaBeouf to strive his hand at directing a proper manufacturing. It seems to be a choice that virtually everybody concerned got here to remorse.
All through the corporate’s months of socially-distanced rehearsals, LaBeouf spirals into an abusive maniac. Hardly a scene goes by the place he isn’t screaming that any individual sucks, stinks, or has personally offended him with their mediocrity. What he perceives as an actor’s failure to giggle accurately prompts a deeply private verbal beatdown through which he tells the person that he by no means needs to see him once more after the manufacturing wraps. “It’s not my job to show you,” he angrily screams at one scholar. Some actors give up the corporate relatively than tolerate the abuse, which solely makes LaBeouf tougher on everybody else. There are such a lot of totally different scenes of abuse that it could be inconceivable to write down them off as remoted incidents. LaBeouf even demonstrates occasional self-awareness within the second, saying “If any individual talked to me the best way I’m speaking to them, I’d shut down utterly,” earlier than persevering with the very same habits. Essentially the most surprising a part of the movie is that anybody was keen to stay with him till the tip.
Clocking in at simply shy of two and a half hours and consisting primarily of footage of LaBeouf verbally abusing everybody round him, “Slauson Rec” is a protracted, typically troublesome viewing expertise. That isn’t all the time a foul factor within the realm of documentaries, as loads of very important nonfiction movies have secured their place in cinema historical past by forcing us to have a look at ugly societal evils that wanted to be remembered. However this isn’t “Shoah.” I’m laborious pressed to think about one other documentary that delivered much less historic or social worth in alternate for making its viewers sit by means of a lot unpleasantness.
Regardless of all of that, “Slauson Rec” is morbidly fascinating. Most sane individuals would hear a sentence like “Shia LaBeouf directing an experimental play starring a bunch of nonprofessional actors throughout an unprecedented international pandemic” and have the ability to predict how the movie seems with roughly 98% accuracy. However there’s all the time a spot between what we predict we learn about celebrities and what truly occurs behind closed doorways, so it’s satisfying to have these predictions validated with practically three hours of documentary footage.
Whereas the movie will get relatively redundant in its depiction of LaBeouf’s abuses, it wraps the story up with a surprisingly poignant name for grace and forgiveness. LaBeouf, who purchased O’Neil a digital camera so he may shoot the documentary, sits down with him for a last interview and owns as much as his horrible habits. (No less than, this particular horrible habits, which is way from the worst factor he has been accused of.) He apologizes for the “god complicated” that consumed him throughout Covid and admits that “I needed to come to phrases with the truth that I don’t have a lot to supply by way of steering.” Many will, after all, be tempted to say that the interview was a publicist-coached effort at rehabbing his picture and the behind-the-scenes footage represents his actual self. And whereas there’s no solution to definitively refute that, it nearly doesn’t matter. As a result of the movie actually isn’t about him.
When seen as a two-and-a-half hour documentary about Shia LaBeouf being an asshole, “Slauson Rec” is relatively pointless. However deliberately or not, it really works extra successfully as an artifact of pandemic-era dysfunction that captures the unusual facet quests and persona overhauls that so many people tried throughout a painful 12 months. To many, the socially distanced screaming matches will probably be a reminiscence of a time when our makes an attempt to take care of normalcy throughout irregular circumstances made us notice precisely how damaged we actually had been. And if Shia of all individuals is able to forgive himself for the way he acted throughout these years, you and I shouldn’t hesitate to do the identical.
Grade: C+
“Slauson Rec” premiered on the 2025 Cannes Movie Competition. It’s at the moment looking for U.S. distribution.
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