Release

Mysterious Skin

My friend, Bob, asked me to give him my take on this film, Mysterious Skin. I was supposed to go see it last week but alas, scheduling difficulties occured.

I saw it yesterday-- outstanding; well-produced, well-cast, dark but inspiring.

What happens to an 8 year old boy who is the victim of sexual abuse? Meet Neil and Brian. Neil and Brian have alot in common: they are the same age, they are from the same small town in Kansas and they were both sexually abused by their Little League coach.

Brian buries the truth and instead grows up believing that he has been abducted by aliens. Neil, on the other hand, accepts the truth easily but becomes numb to the world, stoic and a gay hustler. While their paths cross at 8 years old on a Little League team, their lives remain separate until they cross again 10 years later.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Neil) and Brady Corbett (Brian) did phenomenally well in these roles. Gordon-Levitt has come a long way from 3rd Rock From The Sun, this was a very difficult role to play and not just because he was partially clad (at best) most of the time. Corbett was, I have to say, even better as the somewhat bookish and overly trusting contrast to Gordon-Levitt's calloused and harsh. Keep your eye out for these two, this is totally a breakout film for the both of them.

The film did a good job at giving us detail about the situations surrounding the abuse without being too graphic; details filtered through a gauze of inuendo, clever filming and suggestive speech. Still, even though the film tastefully approaches the taboo, I have to warn you. There are scenes in this movie that would be very diffcult for anyone to watch, particularly true for anyone that has been the victim of some abuse. Bring your courage to the seat with your popcorn.

There is an enormous amount going on in this film: how does our youth shape our adult relationships, how do we deal with pain, how do we process, how do we recover. I think they do a good job of focusing on those aspects without dwelling gratuitously on the precipitating events.

The final scene of the movie has the young men on a sofa in a living room, Brian's head resting on Neil's shoulder, talking, venting, healing, both sets of mysterious skin starting to shed. The camera is directly overhead, ascending and the scene becomes smaller and smaller until it fades to credit roll. Symbolic -- since in the end, after all of the confusion, the denial, the anger, the confrontation and the grief, these two young men found what they needed in each other -- release.