Review of Mysterious Skin (2005) by Brian C — 03 Nov 2009

I'm still shaking from the ending of this film. In my opinion, the final scene is one of the most honest, passionate, emotional scenes in a very long time. I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let me say that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is one of my favorite actors. I've seen Brick, 10 Things I Hate About You, and 500 Days of Summer before I saw this film, so I'm used to him in that aspect. But then I saw this film, and I go, "Wow, he can do anything." He plays an emotionally numb teenager who is very much affected by his troubling past. What I most liked about his character was the change he experienced from beginning to end. When we are first introduced to the teenaged Neil, he's a cocky, tough-guy gay teenaged prostitute. But after more and more sexual encounters and a move from the middle of nowhere Kansas to the Big Apple, he becomes more timid yet emotionless. By the end of the last sex scene we see, he turns into a scared little boy, which is more of what we expected in his traumatic childhood.

Eight-year-old Neil is played beautifully. The Coach looks like a typical pedophile, but it's done in such a way that it's almost beautiful. This was the only person who truly loved him (until his eclectic friends Wendy and Eric enter), and he just took it in.

Meanwhile, quiet Brian is tormented by his past in a different way, as he cannot remember what happened. His performance transforms as he finds more and more about his past through Eric, Neil's mother, and finally Neil, right up until the last image, where he lays in Neil's lap, shaking.

This is the kind of film you see with an open mind. See it when you're alone, in the dark, and totally focused in on what's happening. There are very explicit scenes involving young boys, teenaged Neil, and several middle-aged men, and yet there are also very beautiful scenes, like aforementioned final image and the drive-in snow scene.

Sometimes, you need to see something like this that reveals a dark, true side of society, and how traumatic events can affect two people very differently.