HARD CANDY
HARD CANDY
January 9 2008, DVD, home living room, from library
This frankly astonishing, squirm-worthy thriller is both more and less than I had anticipated - more morally-twisty, more claustrophobic, more mindfuckery; less sexy, less easy to have a moral stance to approach the plot. HARD CANDY is a film a bit like RESERVOIR DOGS, wherein there is absolutely nothing to like about any of the characters, but at the same time, everything to feel sympathetic about, everything to relate to and recognize, which of course makes the Viewer feel like a sick, immoral pig-dog. I read some of the responses on the IMDB forums and saw that plenty of people view this film from a stance of black-and-white right-and wrong, i.e. everything that our teenage lead Hayley does to our adult lead Jeff is justified; he's a pedophile and a voyeur and a liar who conceals horrible secrets, and she's a 14-year-old who he's befriended online and who brings her home to do... whatever. But is torture ever justified? Apparently, an alarming proportion of people believe that it is. And this, I just don't understand. More than anything I feel like HARD CANDY is a metaphor for Abu Ghraib - once a moral line has been crossed for someone, apparently people consider it justified to torture the violator, and to take great pleasure from their terror and suffering. Who started it? Who's the wronged party here? What is the appropriate response? It's so fucked, and unlike Joe IMDB (or Donald Rumsfeld), I don't have an answer.
Ellen Page, currently ripping up the critics with her work in JUNO (which I haven't seen, but based on her work in HARD CANDY, is now essential), is hot. There, I've said it. That's one of the moral quandaries that's thrown into the viewer's lap - do you find this underage person to be sexually attractive? If you do, it automatically makes you into a monster, and it's perfectly all right to torture you in the most horrific ways possible. You see all the sides of emerging sexual attractiveness and adult power - her utter confidence and self-assurance is breathtaking - while constantly also receiving signals that she's just a kid - the freckles, the shortness, the relatively flat chest, the sneakers. And not only is she a sexy little scamp, she's also Jack Bauer - preternaturally tough, impossibly clever, coldly savage. Seriously, she's one of the most badass characters I've ever seen in any form of media, ever. I'm trying to think of who else comes close - Coffy, certainly (hence the icon), Katee Sackhoff's Starbuck, Sarah Connor, Tequila from HARD BOILED, Jen Yu from CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON... definitely in that league. But fourteen. And adorable.
Patrick Wilson plays her nemesis Jeff, and while he's mostly just the desperate sucker throughout the film, he's got a hell of a job to do. He manages to make this frankly unlikeable and loathsome fellow almost completely sympathetic, if you have any ability to divorce someone's humanity from the things they're into and the things they've done, which... apparently... most people can't actually do. But it's absolutely gripping to watch the movie and go from hoping he gets what's coming to him, until you have to actually watch what's coming to him, and then you kind of begin to hope he can figure a way out of it - and then you pray he does, and then you feel like a disgusting pig-dog for feeling sympathetic.
Incredible. Beautifully, gorgeously filmed, almost immaculately scripted (I have some problems imagining that even a super-bright, precocious 14-year-old would speak the way Hayley speaks; it's much more a college women's studies sophmore who sleeps with an Andrea Dworkin book under her pillow every night), and simply some of the best physical performances I have ever seen. It's brilliant, but I seriously doubt I can ever watch it again. It's just too intense - and it makes me feel bad. I'm really glad I saw this alone, because I'd be scared to talk about it afterwards with anybody.
January 9 2008, DVD, home living room, from library
This frankly astonishing, squirm-worthy thriller is both more and less than I had anticipated - more morally-twisty, more claustrophobic, more mindfuckery; less sexy, less easy to have a moral stance to approach the plot. HARD CANDY is a film a bit like RESERVOIR DOGS, wherein there is absolutely nothing to like about any of the characters, but at the same time, everything to feel sympathetic about, everything to relate to and recognize, which of course makes the Viewer feel like a sick, immoral pig-dog. I read some of the responses on the IMDB forums and saw that plenty of people view this film from a stance of black-and-white right-and wrong, i.e. everything that our teenage lead Hayley does to our adult lead Jeff is justified; he's a pedophile and a voyeur and a liar who conceals horrible secrets, and she's a 14-year-old who he's befriended online and who brings her home to do... whatever. But is torture ever justified? Apparently, an alarming proportion of people believe that it is. And this, I just don't understand. More than anything I feel like HARD CANDY is a metaphor for Abu Ghraib - once a moral line has been crossed for someone, apparently people consider it justified to torture the violator, and to take great pleasure from their terror and suffering. Who started it? Who's the wronged party here? What is the appropriate response? It's so fucked, and unlike Joe IMDB (or Donald Rumsfeld), I don't have an answer.
Ellen Page, currently ripping up the critics with her work in JUNO (which I haven't seen, but based on her work in HARD CANDY, is now essential), is hot. There, I've said it. That's one of the moral quandaries that's thrown into the viewer's lap - do you find this underage person to be sexually attractive? If you do, it automatically makes you into a monster, and it's perfectly all right to torture you in the most horrific ways possible. You see all the sides of emerging sexual attractiveness and adult power - her utter confidence and self-assurance is breathtaking - while constantly also receiving signals that she's just a kid - the freckles, the shortness, the relatively flat chest, the sneakers. And not only is she a sexy little scamp, she's also Jack Bauer - preternaturally tough, impossibly clever, coldly savage. Seriously, she's one of the most badass characters I've ever seen in any form of media, ever. I'm trying to think of who else comes close - Coffy, certainly (hence the icon), Katee Sackhoff's Starbuck, Sarah Connor, Tequila from HARD BOILED, Jen Yu from CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON... definitely in that league. But fourteen. And adorable.
Patrick Wilson plays her nemesis Jeff, and while he's mostly just the desperate sucker throughout the film, he's got a hell of a job to do. He manages to make this frankly unlikeable and loathsome fellow almost completely sympathetic, if you have any ability to divorce someone's humanity from the things they're into and the things they've done, which... apparently... most people can't actually do. But it's absolutely gripping to watch the movie and go from hoping he gets what's coming to him, until you have to actually watch what's coming to him, and then you kind of begin to hope he can figure a way out of it - and then you pray he does, and then you feel like a disgusting pig-dog for feeling sympathetic.
Incredible. Beautifully, gorgeously filmed, almost immaculately scripted (I have some problems imagining that even a super-bright, precocious 14-year-old would speak the way Hayley speaks; it's much more a college women's studies sophmore who sleeps with an Andrea Dworkin book under her pillow every night), and simply some of the best physical performances I have ever seen. It's brilliant, but I seriously doubt I can ever watch it again. It's just too intense - and it makes me feel bad. I'm really glad I saw this alone, because I'd be scared to talk about it afterwards with anybody.