Mixed Blood

Mixed Blood (1985, Paul Morrissey)
There are so many conflicting tones in the work of Paul Morrissey that it can seem hard to reconcile them. There is little difference in the gentleness here -- the ending image of the sad-eyed stud -- and in "Flesh." There is a relaxing optimism, heightened by the use of ethnic music (Morrissey equates rock and roll with drug suggestion), and yet the subject matter concerns a mother hen and her group of underage drug dealers, convinced that their way of life is acceptable because there are "no laws to stop us." Morrissey's film is thoroughly absurd, an anti-drug satire, and yet it is not an un-serious film. When the kids sell drugs on a street corner like a lemonade stand it's like a metaphor for the brazenness of drugs in the society. He presents a kind of hopeless comedy where kids, among them the impossibly beautiful Rodney Harvey, "go drink beer, break someone's teeth, and go party." And a party? "Drink more beer, break someone's head, and go home." One character describes their life as "so fucking boring you could puke and die."

Morrissey provides a vision of a community of drug users wallowing in squalidness, complete with the dealers who provide it. And yet the conservatism of his morality as it pertains to drugs goes against his liberal inclusiveness and comedic, non-dogmatic, gentle, and religion-free films. (His films may be religion-free because they present his view of life in the absence of religion and other forms of social order.) Even in a squalid den of drug dealers, murder, and addiction there are core elements of assumed families.

His formal qualities are largely influenced by his open-if-still-stylized approach. In his unobstructed visuals -- neither light nor dark, with a tendency towards rot -- and the exaggerated differentness of his characters he recalls Mike Leigh. His films are so intently focused on personality that they defy traditional ideas of acting. His performers don't act, they exist. The stagy fight scenes aren't realistic so much as they are gruesome punch lines. What may be perceived as bad acting is the lack of actual "acting" -- it's Bressonian but with an overripe satirical bluntness. When characters here say "nigger," it doesn't have the usual power-dominating force the word carries in most movies, it's simply blunt casualness.