Some years can define an actor's career. That may happen because of the quality of their work or the cultural impact of the movies they starred in. Sometimes this can be obvious right as the year's unfolding, while, in other instances, the period gains importance in retrospect. Think of Grace Kelly's 1954 or Jessica Chastain's 2011. For Joseph Gordon-Levitt that seminal year might have been 2005…
Since a young age, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has lived and worked in front of cameras. He was only six when he got his first credited role in a TV movie and, by the early 90s, he was well on his way to becoming a child star. Movies like Disney's Angels in the Outfield and the TV show 3rd Rock from the Sun ensured that, and appearances in teen movie classics like 10 Things I Hate About You laid the groundwork for continuing his success into adolescence. However, on the cusp of adulthood, JGL went to college, became a Francophile, and swore to be in good movies upon returning full-time to the job of acting.
This transitional period coincided with the early aughts, and it was by 2005 that the fruits of his newfound ambition started to appear. After all, any doubts about his talent or dedication to cinema would be squelched once Mysterious Skin was released. Greg Araki's coming-of-age tale about repressed memories, underage prostitution, pedophilia, and alien abductions may, at a first glance, appear like the sort of shocking project a former child actor chooses in an attempt to kill lingering impressions of juvenile innocence. However, Mysterious Skin is no shallow provocation.
The film's a bifurcated story about two teenage boys who, when they were little kids, found themselves molested by their baseball coach. Araki uses bits of whimsy and outwardly stylized filmmaking to depict how the two characters deal with their trauma in destructive ways. Both end up defining themselves by the pain they suffered, though Brady Corbet's UFO-obsessed teen takes the path of denial and far-fetched fantasy. In contrast, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Neil willingly reduces himself to a sex object, teetering on the cliff of annihilation as some kind of self-punishment.
Faced with such a complicated role, Joseph Gordon-Levitt finds the aching humanity inside. He makes Neil's internal struggles visible without betraying the pent-up nature of the character's psychology. It's a part that asks for a certain kind of anti-charisma that this particular actor excels at, a mask of clumsy sensuality that is visibly cracked, that beckons and repudiates with the same look. The last scenes of the film, when the protagonists finally meet and old demons are exorcised through remembrance is the most haunting thing either actor ever did, a tender stabbing of the audience's heart.
Mysterious Skin made the festival rounds in late 2004, but its commercial release happened only in the summer of the next year. Looking at reviews of the time, the critical admiration for Joseph Gordon-Levitt's performance is quite profuse and the actor even got a Gotham Award nomination for Best Breakthrough. That same year, a couple of other films hit the festivals, confirming that Gordon-Levitt's tour de force in Araki's picture wasn't a flash in the pan or a one-time deal.
First up, there's Rian Johnson's feature debut, Brick. The film that started the long collaboration between Joseph Gordon-Levitt and the director is a bizarre sort of dramatic premise – a film noir set in contemporaneous high school – one that requires actors able to handle a deliberately anti-naturalistic script. Leading an exceptional cast, Gordon-Levitt is impeccable, delivering ludicrously hard-boiled lines like he was born speaking in pulpy parlance. Without him, this cold pristine movie wouldn't work half as well as it does.
Lee Daniels' Shadowboxer, on the other hand, is as chaotic as Johnson's Brick is disciplined, exploding in every direction with crazy ideas and atonal twists and turns. Playing a mobster's private doctor, Gordon-Levitt represents a rather peculiar casting choice, seeming way too young for the position he's put in, especially after the narrative jumps seven years into the future. Still, whether miscast or not, the actor's take on the supporting role is memorable, especially when it comes to his odd chemistry with onscreen girlfriend Mo'Nique (playing a character named Precious!). It's easy to do good work in a good picture, but to shine from within a trashy disaster is all the more impressive.
So yes, 2005 was Joseph Gordon-Levitt's year, and revisiting his movies makes us wish the actor would return to the spotlight. Maybe he has another Mysterious Skin in him.
Are you a fan of Joseph Gordon-Levitt's 2005 output?