Glenn here. Look, we all know Joseph Gordon-Levitt was a child actor, and a pretty good one, too (that scene where he got skate in the face in Halloween: H20 is very memorable). But let's not kid around here. It wasn't until the release of Gregg Araki's Mysterious Skin in 2005 that most really started to take him seriously. One year later he starred in Brick and he's only continued to rise up the ranks as a popular and critically respected actor. Looking back, I can't recall if his presence was as exciting to me in this film as Michelle Trachtenburg from Buffy, but looking back now he's certainly one of the reasons the film holds up.
It's actually rather appropriate that the 10th anniversary of Mysterious Skin should occur now at around the same time as New York Magazine's article entitled “Why You Should Go to the Movies (and Do Other Stuff) Alone” has been getting shared around on social media. You see, Araki's film was the first film I ever went to see at the cinema by myself. I travelled to Melbourne all on my lonesome, without friends or family who I usually convinced to join me for a day at the arthouse, and caught a screening of the movie that had amassed so much controversy in the local media. There were threats of it being banned after a 'family organization' (code for fundamentalist "won't somebody think of the children" noddies) demanded a review of its already very restrictive R18+ rating which is the Australian equivalent of an NC-17. Given the history of sexually graphic films being banned after similar action - titles like Romance and Baise-Moi - I knew I had to see this film. And fast!
Was it the controversy that made me want to see it? Was it Gordon-Levitt and Trachtenburg? I had never seen an Araki film at that stage and my investigation of queer cinema was still a year or so way from going supernova, having only seen mainstream movies like Philadelphia, being frightfully embarrassed going to seeThe Deep End with my mother, and sneaking views of Beautiful Thing, Stonewall and My Beautiful Laundretteon late night TV, quietly in my room. I guess the idea of Mysterious Skin sounded radical to me. Finally of age, who could stop me?
I remember it vividly. The rebellious feeling of going to see an R-rated movie (remember, much more restrictive than America’s R), one perceived as dirty and disturbing, too! Do young audiences get that thrill anymore? Certainly not in the cinema, I assume. That nervous feeling of the lights going down and entering a world that is so far removed from one’s own typical, ‘normal’ high school suburbia. The crowd buzzing at the thought of what's gotten people so riled up. It both shocked and saddened me, yet also exciting me at the prospect of a new branch of cinema I could embark upon. It still to this day jockeys around with Brokeback Mountain and The New World for favourite film of 2005 and I think its strengths have only grown in the intervening years.
It’s not an elegant movie – the dialogue certainly sounds awkward in a graphic way that people wouldn’t usually sound like – but it remains supremely beautiful and a keen distillation of the impact of abuse as well as looking into the fallacy of “why didn’t you leave?” rhetoric. The complaints leveled at the film suggested that it's a training manual for abusers, which is an eternally grey area that cinema still finds itself uncomfortably straddling in particularly when it comes to violence in the aftermath of tragedy. Wonderfully acted by its young cast especially (it was Brady Corbet's first step on the road to auteur wonderland). Araki and cinematographer Steve Gainer filmed using 35mm and it shows in the vivid colors and striking compositions. The soundtrack, full of sublime dream-pop is the perfect musical accompaniment for the often otherworldly images.
So Mysterious Skin is a particularly fond memory for me. I'm so glad the film wasn't a let down lest I lost my nerve and never be as adventurous again. Even if I didn't have a story attached to the film, it would still be an excellent film worth revisiting or discovering for the first time. There's a frankness to it that is engaging yet disturbing and cinematically envigorating just like all good queer cinema should be and rarely is anymore. I wonder if anybody who didn't fall entirely for in 2005 might think differently now given it was the last gasp of an exceptional 15-year era of queer film.