Mysterious Skin

Some art is not meant for the purposes of entertainment, but for psychological engagement. In fact it might even be said that most art, maybe all art, meaning art that is created for the purpose of artistry, or to extend some truth beyond and deeper than simple narrative, is actually never made for the purpose of entertainment. Maybe any art whose purpose is to entertain is never art, but kitsch. The most successful art, however, probably possesses elements of both entertainment and engagement, since that’s the way to reach a broader audience. Sometimes though, due to the subject matter, entertainment is simply not possible. The material is too raw, too authentic, too discomfiting, so much so that the experience is not a pleasant one. These are works that are likely to be viewed once and never again.

This was the feeling I got when I watched George Araki’s “Mysterious Skin.” It was not at all a pleasant viewing experience yet it had something vital to say. Often when we think about transgressive movies or books there’s a kind of dark humor that makes the material more digestible. You can take issues like addiction and murder and abuse and put them into a context that is at least a little more palatable for a general audience. Usually the goal is not to cause your audience to turn away because they can no longer bear to look. A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.

I am not too familiar with Araki’s work. I know he is a renowned gay filmmaker but the only two films I’d seen prior to Mysterious Skin was Doom Generation and Smiley Face, both of which I really enjoyed. But those were comedies. Mysterious Skin was not a comedy. In fact it was so serious and uncomfortable as to nearly be an anti-comedy. Except usually what passes for anti-comedy is still kind of funny because there is an irony about it. Not so with Mysterious Skin.

Mysterious Skin concerns two boys who were both sexually abused by the same man—their little league baseball coach. However each went on to integrating the experience in vastly different ways. The first, Neil, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, grows up to be a gay hustler, who spends his evenings in the local park offering sexual services to anyone who will pay him for them. He has slept with hundreds of men and is possessed by moral turpitude. His best friend, a woman, tells an acquaintance of hers to be careful around him, because he has a big black hole where his heart should be. Neil admits later in the film that his experience of sexual abuse has come to define everything about him. It’s the one thing he thinks about constantly. You get the sense that he is seeking some redemption. He just doesn’t quite know where to find it.

Then there is Brian, played by Brady Corbet, who was so traumatized by his experience that he blacked it out, and only knows that there is a chunk of time from his childhood that is missing, and he doesn’t know why. Over time he has come to believe he was abducted by aliens, and he too is seeking some redemption, trying to find out what the aliens wanted from him. But after meeting another abductee, he begins to recall certain things about his experience that leads him to seek out Neil, who he believes may have been abducted alongside him.

Neil then takes Brian under his wing and helps him to unearth the truth about his extraterrestrial experience.

Every scene of this film is uncomfortable, and each scene is more uncomfortable than the one before it, until by the end, when we are being treated to a graphic play-by-play of the encounter that shaped both of them, we are both repulsed and engaged, but definitely not entertained. It’s a rare film that gets this raw. It is transgressive in a way that hits you in the gut. This is not American Psycho or Fight Club or Pink Flamingoes. It may just be one of the most transgressive American films ever made.