FILM REVIEW: 'RESURRECT DEAD: THE MYSTERY OF THE TOYNBEE TILES'
Now Streaming: Cryptic Documentary Weaves Worldwide Mystery
(Land of Missing Parts Productions) The story told in Jon Foy's Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles is one of the strangest and most intriguing you're likely to see in a documentary about real events. It concerns Foy's friends — Justin Duerr, Colin Smith, and Steve Weinik — and their search for a mysterious man who has been gluing linoleum tiles to the streets of cities across North and South America for nearly thirty years.
There are two very curious things about the “tiler.” First, no one in all that time has been able to conclusively identify him, despite a lot of amateur detective work and sharing of information on Internet forums dedicated to the mystery. Second, and even more bizarre, the message contained in the tiles themselves:
TOYNBEE IDEA IN Kubrick's 2001 RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPITER.
This is where a vague shiver begins to run up your spine. Almost every single tile placed by this unknown man has contained that message, with very little variation. Different tiles will contain different ancillary information, but that one central message has been showing up on streets in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Kansas City, Boston, Washington, D.C., New York City, San Francisco, Roswell, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Cleveland, and a few cities in South America since the 1980s. Some are thought to be the work of copycats, but most are attributed to the original tiler.
What at first seems like a demented graffiti project becomes an obsession for these four men, with Duerr as their leader. Duerr has been trying to find the tiler, whom he believes lives in his hometown of Philadelphia, since he was an adolescent runaway living in an artists' squat. He has made solving the enigma his life's work, and it is he who brings the four sleuths together.
If the idea of this outlandish message having rested, mostly unnoticed, beneath our very feet for decades gives you a thrill of excitement and curiosity, then this is the film for you. The documentary is perfectly paced, introducing the history of the Toynbee Tiles parallel with the history of Duerr's obsession. It explores each element of the tiler's message — historian Arnold Toynbee, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, the vision of a man-made heaven on Jupiter — in detail without ever seeming either rushed or meandering. There isn't any wasted information, nor is there anything that feels lacking. It tells exactly the story it wants to tell.
Duerr and company follow the trail of the tiler through old newspaper articles, shortwave radio broadcasts from something called the Minority Association, a play by David Mamet, and the experiences of Philadelphia residents who give clues to the tiler's identity. Through careful logic, they eventually arrive at the door of a man whom they believe to be the tiler. The story is resolved in a way that's very satisfying — providing an answer to the search without spoiling the beautiful mystery of why the tiler does what he does. The image of one man prowling the streets and the twisted avenues of his own mind for years to deliver a message of (imagined?) monumental import is both deeply sad and intellectually compelling, and a full explanation might take away from that.
The real artistry of the film is in the way it tells the story of two men — Justin Duerr and the man he's hunting — and draws startling comparisons between them. Both are lonely, obsessive, and possibly mentally ill, to one degree or another. Both want answers and are willing to work long and hard to find them. Both are possessed of an artistic and philosophical inquisitiveness that drives them to unusual actions.
Resurrect Dead won Foy a Directing Award at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. That's not much of a surprise, once you've seen the film. It's an elegant, sublime journey that makes you feel like you're watching the best moments of The X-Files or Lost, but with the added amazement that it's all true. Life can often be very strange, but it's only rarely this captivating.
For Fans Of: The X-Files, Exit Through the Gift Shop, The Mothman Prophecies, Lost
Why We Like It: real-life mystery, psychological exploration of curiosity, great pacing, bizarre and wonderful story
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