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February 1, 2009

THE WRESTLER; AMERICAN TEEN

TWO THOUGHTS

I just saw THE WRESTLER. The critical momentum for this one is pretty intense; it got Mickey Rourke an Oscar nomination. Fifty percent of the movie is reminiscent of Italian neo-realism - broken people in a world that continues to break them, with no apparent cinematic resolution. We thankfully never dive into Rourke's Randy the Ram past, but only realize that it's there, thus giving it a significance that doesn't seem contrived or typical.

The rest, unfortunately, is every redemption cliché in the redemption movie Mad Libs book. That I liked it better than most of those films is a testament to Rourke, not to the mechanics of the story. He's got a daughter, and there's a hooker with a heart of gold, and there's a big fight, and he wants to get his life back together, and he takes a job that seems beneath him working for a jackass, etc. As I said, at its best, it redeems these clichés, but at its worst it only highlights their familiarity.

What works best, and here I credit both Rourke and director Aranofsky, is its sympathetic take on both wrestlers and Professional Wrestling. The temptation is to show it as a gaudy, red-state fueled freakshow, whose stars and promoters manipulate their lowest-common denominator fans. Rather it's a community that seems to like and respect each other. There are no sleazy promoters, only those who really thrive off the obvious theatrics and thankful lack of subtlety. The locker room moments suggest the intimacy of a good documentary, and the wrestling itself is creative conceived and filmed. So while THE WRESTLER is a minimal success, the wrestling is a triumph, and it shows why Aranofsky is such a fascinating filmmaker.

Rourke is a character. In the 1980s, he had a young Brando's looks, magnetism, and intensity. His turn-downs are legendary: PULP FICTION and RAIN MAN, only to star in hard R dreck. He had an unmemorable career as a boxer, and several surgeries. What Rourke brings to the role is not, as I've been hearing, a lived-in quality. What we're seeing is Rourke the actor; this is not an anomaly, or even the role he was born to play. Rourke is a genuinely talented individual and this film is proof of that. I hope he wins the Oscar.

AMERICAN TEEN reckons to both revisit and reinvent THE BREAKFAST CLUB. Check out the posters if you don't believe me:

By taking four of its "types," the nerd, the freak, the jock, and the princess (no Judd Nelson; that dude in Judd's outfit is another jock), and showing how they operate in a real (mostly white) school twenty-something years later. The idea is intriguing - it could be the antidote to all those high school stories that settle on the Manichean jock/nerd dichotomy, the hyper-intense social nightmare that is the Prom, and the mythical prominence of the "wedgie."

A few words on THE BREAKFAST CLUB if you don't mind: it's endearingly terrible. Like any "very special" episode of BLOSSOM, it features teenagers opening up about their lives in the ways that teenagers normally don't: with poetic introspection written by a screenwriter. John Hughes is a master of clever dialogue ("Does Barry Manilow know you raid his wardrobe?"), something that teenagers are not. Real teenagers talk, act, and think more like the aimless stoners of Richard Linklater's masterpiece DAZED AND CONFUSED: myopic, self-obsessed, kind of whiny, full of an undeserved sense of dignity and entitlement. The brightest teenagers I have ever known make an active effort to overcome such traits. Yet Linklater makes his kids sympathetic (as teenagers are) without giving them redeeming speeches or mean parents (this is a longer discussion, but I think D&C is quite possibly the best movie of the 1990s).

Also, the acting in CLUB is pretty uniformly dismal (except for Ally Sheedy and the guy who plays the principal), and it shows why all the careers would crash and burn shortly after this moment of their highest stardom. The immaturity of these stars was on full display in ST. ELMO'S FIRE, a film so breathtakingly stupid that its climatic moment is when Demi Moore tries to commit suicide by opening all the windows of her apartment in an attempt to freeze to death.

At the end of the opening credits for CLUB, words from David Bowie's worst song are made iconic, and no doubt graced the pages of countless high school yearbooks: "And these children that you spit on as they try to change their worlds, they are immune to your consultations, they're quite aware of what they're going through." Bowie's song is (probably) ironic, but is taken as an earnest message about growing up. The quote is misguided. After having taught and worked with teenagers for seven years, I don't the universal claim that Bowie makes: there are certain some "children" who are "quite aware what they're going through," but they are clearly the minority. Talk to anyone who has been a teenager in the past tense, and they'll explain to you that the years from 15 to 18 are the ones when they had NO idea what they were going through. So CLUB is not only maudlin and overwritten, it's also dishonest, because it takes this Bowie quote as some guiding principle, rather than the first step in an inquiry.

Which is why, I suppose, I was excited about AMERICAN TEEN - I had hoped that it would challenge the presumptions of movies like THE BREAKFAST CLUB. It does, but it fails magnificently in a daze of artistic pretensions. A good documentary recognizes the need for narrative but doesn't impose one: TEEN is structured like any Hollywood movie - ups and downs, peaks and valleys, final redemptions, etc.

For instance, the freak is better looking than the princess. The nerd has parents who can afford to fly him off to California and fly in a prom date for him. The jock is goofier looking than the nerd, and his Dad is an Elvis impersonator. These would be interesting observations, if we didn't have to infer them. Because the director is so interested in imposing her own vision and narrative on these kids that we're left to wonder if she wasn't behind the scenes manipulating things to dramatic effect. Which is too bad, because there are some interesting unexplored elements here: like the nature of social hierarchies within more limited sub-groups (the way the band organizes its social hierarchy in the same way as the cool kinds who reject them, for instance).

The key moment (spoiler) is when the freak goes out with a jock (not "the jock," however). It looks like it's going to work out, but then dumps her via text message.

Wow. Were they following this girl 24 hours a day? Because I find it hard to believe that we were with her the moment the text message was sent, as the film makes it appear. And if they were following her all day, what we're left with is not a movie about the way teenagers actually act, but the way teenagers actually act when they know they're being filmed by a documentary crew. And what's fascinating is that a dude knows the girl he's dating is being filmed, and still acts so idiotic. The other three subjects generally don't know what to do, and thus spend time offering mildly interesting observations about their lives, structured around a manipulated narrative. At some point, I'm guessing, the director realized the teens weren't fitting neatly into the preconceived notions she had about them, and decided to use the footage she had to suggestively jam it all together.

I was reminded of THE REAL WORLD, a show which I have only seen segments of, which asks something like, "What happens when you put 12 different people in a room for 8 weeks and . . ." But the real question is, "What happens when you tell these people you're filming them and they're not professional actors yet they feel the urgent need to craft a persona for a viewing audience?" It's a sham, but at least THE REAL WORLD was acknowledged as such (I think). AMERICAN TEEN aims at something between a sociological experiment, a contemporary statement about the nature of being young, and cinema verite authenticity, and on each count it fails spectacularly.

DAZED AND CONFUSED ends with a dazed moment of fleeting glory: the conceited yet free-spirited quarterback blows off his coach so he can go smoke pot with his friends at an Aerosmith concert. It is a shallow victory, yet it is realized in elevated visual terms that teenagers would give it. Everything we've seen in the movie recognizes the shallowness, the empty fun, without exploiting it. That was a great movie.

PS - Please note that I am saying that teenagers, while generally shallow and er . . . dazed and confused, often actively make efforts to overcome their immaturity, and this is somewhat heroic. Their shallowness and myopia is not necessarily innate, but also is based on a number of outside factors that this movie fails to explore.

| By Andytown | 10:22 AM

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Posted by: JEP at February 2, 2009 8:34 PM

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