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February 07, 2005

The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, Castro Theater, 2/4/05

I've been trying to write this entry for some time now, because there was something about J. T. Leroy's book that I really liked, yet something about the movie that I didn't. I went to the opening of the Independent Film Festival and thought I'd be seeing an amazing movie. Asia Argento directed the adaptation of his collection of loosely connected short stories. She was supposed to be there, but she couldn't make it. J. T. was lurking somewhere in the audience, keeping himself inconspicuous as usual.

Then we watched the movie. I was puzzled by my reaction because the movie is very faithful to the book. It follows those stories closely and simply depicts quite clearly and simply so much of what the book describes. And yet, I was disappointed. I had to read the book again to figure out what that was. (If you want to read the first few pages, Amazon has them online.) A conversation with a good friend helped clarify my ideas too. (Thanks Roddy.)

J.T.'s writing is amazing for using very simple wording and sentences to create some very complex child characters. Part of the effect is accomplished by the wording, I think. He's also very good at giving his characters multiple motivations for their actions. In the first story, we see how repulsed Jeremiah is at this woman who's claiming to be his mother. His foster parents seemed so perfect and she is such a mess. At the same time, it's clear he wants someone to be his mother. Like all children, he seems so needy.

Unfortunately, it doesn't quite translate in the movie. The looks of the movie is very much right. It looks downright squalid. The low budget certainly helps in this case. In the first part of the movie, it seems like Jeremiah choses to stay with his mother because she's bullying him when the truth should be both his mother's bullying and his consuming want for a mother. It turns the movie into a litany of horrible events in a child's life, but that child seems so distant from most of it. The horror of the situation encompasses the whole of the film without much of Jeremiah's complexity. I think the first problem is having three actors play the same part. The second might be that none of the actors playing the role is very convincing. The third problem is visual. By depicting the events in the book so clearly, the horror aspect of the movies is emphasized over the neediness. The fourth problem would be that once I figured out how horrible this life was going to be, I started looking for the moments where the Jeremiah actor could not have been physically in these horrid scenes and I started finding how those scenes were edited together. It was distancing, which doesn't help with this particular movie.

I hope that J.T. Leroy's other books are filmed, but I'm doubtful they'll ever come out right. The filmed version of Jesus's Son comes closest to what this movie could have been, but it may require a subtlety movies lack.

I'm still glad I saw the movie, but I just expected more. If I were to give the movie a letter grade, I'd give it a solid B, but I'm not sure how to improve this difficult adaptation.

Posted by deaconmf at February 7, 2005 12:02 PM

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