Sunday, August 06, 2006
Friday Night Box Office
Mysterious Skin Review
It's a terrible movie. It's moving, it's disturbing, it's bleak and it's beautiful all at once - but it's terrible, because it is so agonising to watch.
Two boys, both sexually abused by their baseball coach when they were eight. One grows up to be a gay prostitute, the other an introverted, timid, stay-at-home boy who believes he was abducted by aliens.
I guess I shouldn't have expected a light-hearted fluffy rom-com-chick-flick, but I wasn't really prepared for how painful it was going to be.
In one heartbreaking scene, the coach and the boy sit in his kitchen, eating cereal. Then the coach tears open a box of cocoa pops and pours the cereal all over his head. The boy, Neil (later to be the gay prostitute) laughs, and both coach and boy end up emptying cereal all over the kitchen, giggling with giddy happiness; that scene is visually top-notch - coloured fruit loops and clouds of sugar tumbling through the air is quite pretty; but there are these really disturbing undercurrents of something much less innocent than a boy and a man having a plain good fun - and twenty seconds later the coach lowers Neil down to the cereal-covered ground and proceeds to show him what men do to people they 'really really like'. Ten years down the road, Neil shows other men what he does to people he doesn't really like but does anyway because it pays well. In one scene, one extremely violent man forces Neil into a tub and straddles him vigorously, grabbing a shampoo bottle and smashing it down on Neil's head while shouting "Slut slut slut slut slut!" as Neil's blood pours down the drain. It probably isn't the purpose of the film, but it has really scared me off big silent men with moustaches and frighteningly intense eyes.
Poor Brian (later to be the one obsessed with alien abductions) is the sort of person you just want to hug and never ever let go because the world is just too cruel and evil and damaging for such a sensitive soul. He goes in search of Neil - because only Neil knows what happened to Brian (besides the monstrous coach) and can help explain those strange blackouts, nose bleeds, and nightmares. The last scene with Brian and Neil breaking into the coach's house and sitting on the couch - Brian trembling and crying and bleeding from the nose as he finally realises what happened years and years ago; and Neil crying and tightly holding on to Brian - those two boys, both so equally but differently damaged and messed up and screwed over, with barely any sense of hope or remittance, just makes you want to slash your wrists and wish you were never ever born.
It's a terrible movie. It's moving, it's disturbing, it's bleak and it's beautiful all at once - but it's terrible, because it is so agonising to watch.
Two boys, both sexually abused by their baseball coach when they were eight. One grows up to be a gay prostitute, the other an introverted, timid, stay-at-home boy who believes he was abducted by aliens.
I guess I shouldn't have expected a light-hearted fluffy rom-com-chick-flick, but I wasn't really prepared for how painful it was going to be.
In one heartbreaking scene, the coach and the boy sit in his kitchen, eating cereal. Then the coach tears open a box of cocoa pops and pours the cereal all over his head. The boy, Neil (later to be the gay prostitute) laughs, and both coach and boy end up emptying cereal all over the kitchen, giggling with giddy happiness; that scene is visually top-notch - coloured fruit loops and clouds of sugar tumbling through the air is quite pretty; but there are these really disturbing undercurrents of something much less innocent than a boy and a man having a plain good fun - and twenty seconds later the coach lowers Neil down to the cereal-covered ground and proceeds to show him what men do to people they 'really really like'. Ten years down the road, Neil shows other men what he does to people he doesn't really like but does anyway because it pays well. In one scene, one extremely violent man forces Neil into a tub and straddles him vigorously, grabbing a shampoo bottle and smashing it down on Neil's head while shouting "Slut slut slut slut slut!" as Neil's blood pours down the drain. It probably isn't the purpose of the film, but it has really scared me off big silent men with moustaches and frighteningly intense eyes.
Poor Brian (later to be the one obsessed with alien abductions) is the sort of person you just want to hug and never ever let go because the world is just too cruel and evil and damaging for such a sensitive soul. He goes in search of Neil - because only Neil knows what happened to Brian (besides the monstrous coach) and can help explain those strange blackouts, nose bleeds, and nightmares. The last scene with Brian and Neil breaking into the coach's house and sitting on the couch - Brian trembling and crying and bleeding from the nose as he finally realises what happened years and years ago; and Neil crying and tightly holding on to Brian - those two boys, both so equally but differently damaged and messed up and screwed over, with barely any sense of hope or remittance, just makes you want to slash your wrists and wish you were never ever born.
# posted by me lah @ 4:55 pm 
