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Bully
****
Cinema Releases - March 1, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 18. 110
minutes. Directed by Larry Clark. Written by Zachary Long, Roger Pullis;
based on the book "Bully: A True Story of High School Revenge" by Jim Schutze.
Starring Brad Renfro, Bijou Phillips, Rachel Miner, Nick Stahl, Michael Pitt,
Leo Fitzpatrick, Kelly Garner, Daniel Franzese, Nathalie Paulding, Jessica
Sutta, Ed Amatrudo.
Larry Clark's "Bully" is a movie
about stupid, thoughtless slackers who end up doing something grotesque and
evil simply because they have no foresight, depth or sense. These are kids
growing up in reasonably affluent suburban communities, and when in front
of parents their voices slow down and turn polite. But what are they thinking?
Their actions are so absent of moral value, so base, so dumb; even at the
end of the movie, when they end up in inevitable trouble, they still haven't
grasped what's going on, let alone how they got there. They just don't get
it.
Nick Stahl plays Bobby, who talks about college
and joining the family business at home but comes across as a brutish thug
in every other situation. There's just no line with this guy -- he walks
and talks like a gansgta, pimp-rolling around town, using the word 'bitch'
as punctuation; he hits people out of the blue; he defers orders like some
kind of demented general, at one point ordering a friend to dance in a gay
bar for cash, or else.
Bobby holds some kind of sickening hold over his
longtime buddy Marty, who is played by Brad Renfro. Marty tries to stand
up for himself sometimes, never wavering from his sullen expression or indignant
voice, but he never gets anywhere. Whenever Marty looks like he's going to
make a command decision, Bobby makes sure to look him in the eyes and remind
him, "You're my best friend, you know."
Marty forms a relationship with an immature girl
called Lisa (Rachel Miner) -- it starts as a casual screw in the back seat,
but Lisa is one of those girls who thinks getting screwed means she has a
boyfriend. She hangs around Marty, and it sorta sticks, because neither of
them have anything better to do. Bobby is abusive to Lisa, and to her friend
Ali (Bijou Phillips), and of course he has no reason to stop his ruffian
rapport with Marty. This is just Bobby's way -- slapping, insulting, turning
sex into violence. "There's nothing I can do about it, except kill him,"
jokes Marty.
And that's how it starts. Marty, Lisa and Ali
idly chitchat about killing Bobby, and somehow it's a topic of conversation
that carries on, and somehow these kids turn conversation into planning without
ever confronting the reality of what they're talking about. They do mean
to kill Bobby, but they give it as much thought as if they're kidding. Ali's
stoner boyfriend Donny (Michael Pitt) agrees to join in the plot without
even seeming to realise what's going on -- "You mean, like, kill him as in,
like, dead an' all?" he asks, giggling. A scene in which Ali is assigned
to be the triggerman sees her ask "Me?", as if she's shocked... and then
she shrugs, as if it doesn't make a difference, and says, "Yeah,
whatever."
The plot may sound a little like that of "Heathers",
but "Bully" is not a comedy, although humour does come from the Pitt character,
who is hilarious in the way he sincerely keeps blurting out nonsense and
never gets a clue. This is a penetrating film that does an excellent job
of charting the idiotic way its characters just fall into doing something
despicable, because their lives are so devoid of analysis, context or sense.
Presumably because the film is based on a real-life Florida murder case from
1993, some reviews have criticised the film for lack of clear theory about
the cause of America's social turmoil, but Clark, the director, is not trying
to analyse the reasons, but look in appalled fascination at the miserable
results.
Clark has also come under fire for his graphic
depiction of teenage sexuality. His style, which is immeasurably more honest
than the countless teen flicks that exploit sex without ever really dealing
with it, has led to accusations that he is a dirty old man. My feeling is
that Clark cares less about eroticism than he does about showing how sickly
and misplaced these kids look as they try to inhabit a world they're not
mature enough to grasp with any sense of command -- his documentary camerawork
emphasises how young they look, how pallid and fragile their skin is, how
clumsy and gawky they seem as they flaunt their sexuality, strut about the
place, fumblingly handle drugs. It's not just sex that Clark views graphically,
but the way his characters sit on the toilet, wash and carry themselves.
And it's the rhythms of their speech. And it's the way they feel while stoned
-- one great scene diverts from stark reality to let the camera, without
announcement, start circling the actors slowly but dizzyingly, and it captures
with accuracy that disorientated semi-giddiness that one feels on drugs,
where words run into each other, and you get the gist of them, but something
about their stream seems indefinably bizarre.
Clark's visual style gives us a feel for the flesh
of his characters, enabling him to deal with their actions and mindsets in
an almost telepathically visceral way. No, we don't get to understand their
lack of thought, but we get a good feel for it.
And then of course there is the killing itself,
where the kids finally know for a fact that they're really doing it, and
we can feel waves of shock, disbelief and anxiety. There are a couple of
Shakespeare references -- Lisa echoes Lady Macbeth, alternating between scheming
and paranoid frustration, while the physicality of the murder reminds us
of "Julius Caesar". Clark turns the movie from an unadorned study of young
people in a moral void to a work of high drama without compromising the texture
of the piece; the Shakespearean imagery introduces dramatic sweep on a subliminal
level, and places the characters in situations too powerful for them to
comprehend.
"Bully" joins "In Cold Blood", "The Onion Field",
"At Close Range", "River's Edge" and "Boys Don't Cry" on the list of great
American films about killing. In a way, it's even better -- to some extent
those movies let us sit and nod at their atmospheric power and edgy performances,
while Clark is so visually involved in his scenes that he submerges us in
the material. "Bully" is like a reinvention of cinematic
power.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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