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At Close Range
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The
1980s are usually painted as a return to conventional, ideologically reassuring
narrative formats within American cinema after the freewheeling, politically contestatory experiments of the ‘70s. But the legacy of
Robert Altman and others survived in an unexpected place: the teen movie genre,
upon which At Close Range is an
especially dramatic, even Gothic variation (the true-life story from the mid
‘70s on which the film is quite closely based was described by Time magazine as “Pennsylvania Gothic”).
Many
actors familiar from the teen comedies and romances of the early ‘80s (Sean
& Christopher Penn, Mary Stuart Masterson, Crispin Glover, Kiefer
Sutherland) appear, albeit in a starkly realist, low-life context; Foley
himself had previously made the classic teen rebel story Reckless (1984), and went on to
make the crazy teen thriller Fear (1996).
Although At Close Range builds an impressive, noirish atmosphere of escalating (frequently nocturnal)
dread, Foley’s primary concern is scarcely to tell a tight, driving story: it
is well over an hour before the first major violent incident occurs.
Rather,
the film – superbly written by Nicholas Kazan (and revisiting elements he first dramatised in the script for his father Elia Kazan’s The
Visitors [1972]) – focuses on creating a mood (alternately languorous and
elliptical), describing a milieu, and exploring the theme of a malignant family
unit, in which otherwise admirable codes of honour, loyalty and closeness have
become evil and ultimately self-destructive over time.
It’s
a bleak tale. Brad Jr (Sean Penn) lives with his
brother Tommy (Christopher Penn), mother Julie (Millie Perkins) and grandmother
(Eileen Ryan). A tough but deeply feeling teenager, Brad begins a tender
relationship with a local girl, Terry (Masterson). After clashing with Julie’s
boyfriend, Brad Jr leaves home and seeks out his alluring
criminal father, Brad Sr (Walken),
who leads a gang of family members and associates.
Alternately
paternal and dismissive, Brad Sr draws in and
manipulates Brad Jr and Tommy, gradually initiating
them into the code of his world. As Brad Jr’s bond
with Terry grows, her presence disturbs Brad Sr’s gang. This darkest of fathers becomes increasingly paranoiac and violent, meting
out retribution (either at his own hand, or by arranging the intervention of
others) in all directions – even upon those closest to him. The film explores
the painful, even deadly paradoxes of “blood ties” in such a criminal milieu.
As
Foley remarked during production, the material of the true story was so bleak
that it proved difficult to fix on anything positive or redemptive in it. The
one spark of hope or integrity is provided by Brad Jr and his final rejection of the father’s control. Penn brings a poignant mix of
brutishness and sensitivity to this role.
Richly
textured (Juan Ruiz Anchía’s often free-form cinematography
is remarkable), At Close Range is, in
retrospect, an extraordinarily daring film in style as in content. It harks
back to the severe narrative experiments of Monte Hellman (a tribute signalled by the presence of Millie Perkins), and
anticipates the 1990s work of Larry Clark in
the USA, as well as Claire Denis in France. Even the constant reworking of a
musical motif associated with Madonna’s pop hit “Live to Tell” acquires a
minimalistic force here, in concert with all the other stylistic traits.
Although
overlooked in its day (partly due to the collapse of the Hemdale company, which also produced the similarly dark and moody teen drama River’s Edge [1986]), At Close Range now rates as Foley’s
finest work.
MORE Foley: The Chamber, The Corruptor, Glengarry Glen Ross © Adrian Martin 2008 |
