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Mysterious Skin review
A new review for Michelle Trachtenberg's upcoming movie "Mysterious Skin". |
By Daniel Fienberg
Brian (Brady Corbet) and Neil (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are two of the least reliable cinematic narrators since the disturbingly simple Holly (Sissy Spacek) mused on death and romance in Terrence Malick's "Badlands." Like Holly, Brian and Neil are reflecting on events that go far beyond casual comprehension, a shared tragedy that neither has properly faced or understands. Over the course of Gregg Araki's challenging and chilling "Mysterious Skin," steps toward rebirth are taken and a journey of self-discovery begun, but it's made clear that simple answers aren't in the offing.
In the summer of 1981, two boys, growing up in Hutchinson, Kansas, are molested by their Little League baseball coach. Years later, that summer has shaped their characters.
In his deluded narration, Neil interprets his violation as a pathway to understanding his destiny and his homosexuality, clinging desperately to the idea that Coach chose him out of love. He's become a nihilistic street hustler, charismatic enough to charm his best friends Wendy (Michelle Trachtenberg) and Eric (Jeffrey Licon) who love him, but recognize that he's a black hole.
Brian, though, remembers nothing of the incident. He awoke with a nosebleed and five hours missing from his memory. He has convinced himself that he was abducted by aliens, but his dreams are hinting at new details, things he doesn't want to understand, but can't avoid.
Although various subplots keep the lead characters apart -- Neil heads to New York, while Brian seeks answers from a lonely fellow abductee ("24" co-star Mary Lynn Rajskub) -- there's never any doubt that the film is building toward a confrontation between Brian and Neil, and when that scene finally arrives, it's quietly devastating.
Araki, who hasn't made a film since 1999's underappreciated screwball gem "Splendor," has difficulties structuring his adaptation of Scott Heim's novel. The shell-shocked Brian is a socially withdrawn character and all of his scenes are necessarily reactive and awkwardly slow -- he's on a mission to get answers from Neil, but he isn't capable of forcing the action. The self-destructive Neil is a more dynamic character, but his scenes fall into a familiar and repetitive pattern of increasingly problematic sexual encounters, an inexorable crawl from one sniveling, unappealing trick to the next. Wendy and Eric, the two characters with the most tangible connection to the real world, flit in and out, denying viewers a clear point of identification, which is both distancing and, likely, intentional.
Perhaps one of the most unlikely successful directors to ever break out of USC's mainstream-skewing School of Cinema-Television, Araki has rarely cared about viewer identification. Even the best of his earlier films -- 1993's "Totally F***ed Up" and the alien-themed "Nowhere" -- applied layers of gay-inflected irony so thick that they were more interesting as structural exercises than as involving films. Only rarely winking at the audience, "Mysterious Skin" offers the first hints of Araki as a mature artist, a filmmaker capable of balancing the dream-like and nostalgia-drenched flashbacks with the brutal bleakness of the film's later chapters. The shimmering ambient score, by Harold Budd and Robin Guthrie, helps to bridge the gap between the childhood fantasies -- Halloween, sugar cereals, video games and Little League are all idealized and undermined -- and the dour reality of the present.
Araki can't resist mocking the backwater bumpkins who populate the Kansas town, particularly the hypocritical milquetoast Midwesterners who require Neil's services. Mostly, though, he allows the main characters -- particularly Bill Sage's hauntingly human, yet monstrous Coach -- to remain morally ambiguous and only sporadically appealing.
Casual moviegoers who skipped little-scene indies like "Manic" have probably missed Joseph Gordon-Levitt's transformation from "Third Rock from the Sun" teen to wildly impressive twentysomething lead. Obviously reveling in subverting the actor's popular persona, Araki takes Gordon-Levitt to some dark places and is rewarded with a performance that is both literally and emotionally stripped bare. Corbet ("Thunderbirds") and Trachtenberg ("Ice Princess") are also enjoying the chance to stretch beyond the kind of young adult roles Hollywood usually offers.
A number of recent films with child molestation plots or subplots -- projects as different as "The Woodsman" and "Mystic River" -- may have prepared viewers to tackle the material, but "Mysterious Skin" is more graphic and mature than most. Viewers showing up for the recognizable actors or for Araki's regular tongue-in-cheek day-glo coyness, may be moved, but they'll also be taken aback.
| | [by Dana (Zap2It) ] [0 comments]
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