Autism, Boy A, Visitor, Bugcrush, For the Bible Tells Me So, Married Life

Autism: The Musical (2007, Tricia Regan)
Good documentaries do a few things, one of which is show you a world you may not be familiar with. To this end "Autism: The Musical" succeeds quite well, as it gives heartfelt, tough glimpses into the lives of a handful of autistic children and their families. (Incidentally it also educates: how some autistic children find eye-contact difficult, and how some can repeat what they hear but have a hard time making original statements.)

The moral and social value of the movie is such that it, like the best art, encourages empathy and feeling not just for people not like us, but for people not given the same privileges that we enjoy. There are times in the film where parents are passionate and angry (occasionally with each other), explaining the treatment their children receive by other people. We see how tough raising an autistic child can be on families; some relationships don't make it. But you also feel that if every family had a special needs child they may grow, gain empathy, and learn to love in more selfless ways because of it. (It's worth mentioning that while autism is a good umbrella for a group of people, like women or baseball players, each of the children have completely different personalities.)

One mother finds it appalling that her daughter is taught to wash dishes ("so she can sweep the floor at McDonald's") while another mother explains that if she can "crack" the autistic wall for even five minutes that means her child will progress five minutes further than where he was before. The most difficult moment may be when one mother muses that if her daughter outlives her, who in society will "value" her daughter the way she does?

The musical that the children participate in may not have the same artistic or entertainment value of one put on by normal-functioning children, but what it does is allow the children to have an opportunity to complete a task, collaborate in an artistic creation, allow their parents to see their children perform, and serve an as extra-curricular activity for children and parents to prepare for together. The end that the musical represents has a lot of value, but the road to getting there gives just as much.

It would seem callous to not mention that the film choked me up a number of times, but not because it was "happy" or "sad" so much as it showed complex situations and real human beings dealing with them. One symptom of autism is that children don't interact emotionally the same way normal-functioning children can. So it's completely without sentimentality -- and all the more affecting because of it -- when one child says to another that he's "smart," which prompts the other boy to respond, "I always wanted to hear that."

Boy A (2007, John Crowley)
Although it takes a sociological position of examining the adjustment period of a criminal released from prison, the movie takes the early position of sympathy for the boy. We, like the people familiar only with his new identity, become acutely aware of his past after we've already gotten to know him in the present; yes, grown to love him. It's a testament to the tremendous acting talent of Andrew Garfield that it never feels cliched or his character overly harried. As a boy who's been institutionalized during his formative years, he has chunks of identity and experience removed from him, and he with frenzy attempts to fill it in with sudden bursts of emotion. The new emotional feelings of having sex, of wanting it to be "right."

The filmmaking in large part attempts to be naturalistic. The problems are literal, society is dealt with somewhat plainly, the acting is "realistic." And while Peter Mullan is one of the most inherently believable actors alive, it's Garfield who imbues the film, performancewise, with the greatest shades of complexity. His is a character who is at a loss to express, constantly in fear of being revealed and torn apart by the inherent dishonesty in that contradiction. The movie's visuals occasionally give us something more than realism -- a poetic imagining near the end on a dock; some horrifying dreams throughout the film. It's already a fine, often beautiful look at a life getting past setbacks, and becomes more complex with the mob mentality and ostracization.

If there's a flaw in the movie it's the predictability of some of the actions. While it's understandable that Mullan's forgotten son would be offended at being seemingly replaced by a recovering criminal, it seems almost too simple to have Boy A be outed by that simple revenge, although it's a cruel act done with the same ambivalence as the cruelty the boy's friend inflicted on others in youth. It's an indictment of the media's callousness in destroying lives, and how simply the social work people do can come undone by an outside citizen.

The Visitor (2007, Thomas McCarthy)
Although the style is perhaps more low-key, "The Visitor" bears a resemblance to the American social realism of a movie like "The Pursuit of Happyness," both movies trying to bring awareness to social phenomena in America by way of character studies. The film is a microcosm of race relations and a portrait of the diversity of backgrounds in America, and in New York in particular. (It's brought home with humor when a Syrian woman asks a dark-skinned man where he's from and he replies, "Queens.") Richard Jenkins' character acts out of perhaps a combination of liberal guilt, kindness, and boredom. His life isn't going particularly brightly and these "visitors" offer a change in his lifestyle. The film is political in the sense that it concerns itself with immigration, but it's more about basic human principles than political ones. Jenkins doesn't want his new roommate to get deported, not exactly out of a political affiliation or opinion on immigration, but because he wants to keep his friend around and see him and his girlfriend happy. (There's an interesting strain throughout the film about the girlfriend feeling beholden and maybe a little ashamed of having to rely on Jenkins' kindness.) The cast is uniformly quite fine, and I couldn't help but feel that McCarthy's casting choices were almost like Jim Jarmusch's or Claire Denis', in the way he brings together smaller character actors of diverse cultural backgrounds. (Hiam Abbass, who plays the Syrian mother, is in the next Jarmusch film, "The Limits of Control.") In the closing image I was reminded of Denis' "Beau travail," in which a ravaged-faced man expresses himself through music and movement, trying to keep a memory alive.

Bugcrush (2006, Carter Smith)
I didn't feel that the horror film "The Ruins" lived up to the intense praise that the book by Scott Smith generated (such as Stephen King proclaiming it as "the best horror novel of the new century"). But Carter Smith's earlier short film, "Bugcrush," available in the "Boys Life 6" collection, has a rewardingly chilly, antiseptic quality that serves as a nice escape from the hopelessly cheery gay romantic comedies we're used to -- even if I found its ending almost oppressively disturbing. Smith is a rarity in the film world: an openly gay horror director whose films aren't campy. (The same can't be said for "Chucky" creator Don Mancini.) His dark, creepy visuals and sense of unease have similarities to a serious-as-cancer director like David Fincher. The short film was based on a story by Canadian artist Scott Treleaven, and before making films Smith learned his visual style by working as a fashion photographer.

What begins as a familiar horror and even gay film cliché -- a group of teenagers wondering about a strange new kid -- becomes a much darker, elliptical, and increasingly horrific story. The claustrophobic style and metaphoric subject matter invite comparisons to Kafka and David Cronenberg, while the grisly seediness of it brings to mind Dennis Cooper. We identify with the shy, pretty Ben as he gets invited into the mysterious private life of Grant, a brooding and not-particularly-gay-seeming boy from school. There's tactile, uncomfortable sexual tension in their initial exchanges. ("It's not like we hang out or anything," says Ben, inviting Grant to respond with, "Yeah, well…we should sometime.") When the two spend a night together after school there's a sense of seduction with the underlying threat of violence, and what results is the frightening glimpse of a naïve boy into a strange world of boys, bugs, and getting high.

For the Bible Tells Me So (2007, Daniel G. Karslake)
A film that operates to both show us the hypocrisy of biblical references being used by literalists as anti-gay propaganda and to reveal the true meaning of the passages by putting them into historical context. The film is also a personal history of the various religious families depicted who have been affected by homosexuality, namely in their children, and how they've come to accept them, not accept them, or, in the most tragic case, learn to accept them only after losing them. I'm thankful for my upbringing -- as a gay person who was raised in an environment free from religious doctrine and yet with a strong sense of right and wrong. Being raised in an environment free of religion means that some of the religious discussions proved educational for me -- how it was an "abomination" when Onan ejaculated outside of his partner's vagina, spilling his "seed" without the potential for procreation. ("Onan" as in "onanism" -- ie: masturbation.)

Married Life (2007, Ira Sachs)
Drawing heavily on the morals and pleasure of Hitchcock and the melodrama of Sirk, Ira Sachs seems equally indebted to Todd Haynes, most obviously in "Far From Heaven" (co-starring Patricia Clarkson), but there's also a scene where Clarkson gasps for air that brings the parking garage scene from "Safe" to mind. The complex interweaving of characters' relationships to one another, and the tragic inevitability inherent when they unexpectedly collide, reminded me of Jacques Rivette's great "Secret Defense." I think Sachs is a little more interested in being sophisticatedly pleasurable -- the opening title sequence, the Doris Day on the soundtrack -- and dealing in artifice; he's said so far in his career he's dealt mostly with deceit, and that seems true. He's got a taste for old-fashioned irony and plays around a little with post-modern techniques like point of view (we're told the story by Pierce Brosnan, a side character), but he does generate genuine suspense in some cinematic flashes like a scene where a bathtub overflows, or when a compound of deceit goes so far that it threatens to take everything away. Sachs may not be dealing with complex emotions, but he is peeling back relationships and showing the conning and self-interest they involve.