I am a huge fan of Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Ever since I saw his performance in Mysterious Skin, it was evident that he would become a big star. And he has. Unlike most actors who have breakout success, he still weaves in and out of the mainstream and indie worlds of film, and I’m always excited to see what new independent project he is involved with. Initially, I was excited to see Hesher,because it seemed like a role dissimilar to anything he had done before, and I was hoping it may give me the same impression that I got years ago when I saw Mysterious Skin. After seeing Hesher, I cannot fathom why I thought this was ever a possibility.
I must stress that Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s performance isn’t necessarily bad; it’s the character of Hesher that is flawed, along with most of the characters within the film. As far as performances are concerned, Levitt gives a fine performance and embodies a scumbag pretty well. But, Hesher isn’t a very deep character, his lines of dialogue are very crass and formulaic and soon you can predict what Hesher will soon be saying. I often found myself trying to complete his lines of dialogue, how he’s probably going to say something about having sex with some orifice you normally wouldn’t think. And indeed, he did and it certainly wasn’t funny the seventh and eighth time around. I was mainly taken aback by the film since I didn’t know the central character of the story was going to be a young kid, T.J., (Devon Brochu) and his struggle to cope with his mother’s death along with his depressed father, Paul (Rainn Wilson). Both Brochu and Wilson do well with the material they are given; the acting is definitely a valiant effort, although Brochu sometimes stumbles on a tight-rope of cliché (cliché intended) however, which made me question some of his acting abilities, but that’s a script issue mostly. I found his character to often be borderline annoying, but I’m not sure if this is his fault, or just my unmitigated hatred for children, but I digress. Basically, T.J. is having trouble at school, frequently picked on by a bully (not the best child actor there is), and he struggles to reclaim his family’s totaled car his mother had died in. Why he wants to be reminded of the car his mother was killed in, who knows. He bumps into Hesher along the way and soon Hesher follows him everywhere he goes and acts as his immoral compass I suppose. Hesher’s motivation to follow T.J. around is unclear, but then again, most of what Hesher does has no reasoning behind it. I suppose T.J.’s struggle to reclaim their old car, and Hesher butting heads with his family is the closest grasp of what the plot may be (in addition to a small subplot of a boyhood crush), albeit very thin and often sporadic. I’m not going to focus much more on T.J., or his father, because their story is diluted by the unexplainable antics of Hesher throughout the film, hence the title.
Juxtaposed into the “plot” is Hesher, who almost seems capable of other-worldly powers because he is often not noticed by anyone but T.J. For the first twenty minutes of the film this led me to believe Hesher was some sort of projection of T.J.’s subconscious, like a spirit-guide, or the dark side of T.J.’s soul trying to break free which would almost make more sense to be honest. But he wasn’t. Until T.J.’s father recognizes Hesher in their home smoking (he breaks in with ease after T.J. foils his squatting attempt on a construction site), it is clear he actually is in the physical realm and not a figment of T.J.’s imagination. Hesher decides to squat in T.J.’s grandmother’s home with nobody really caring, or trying to prevent it from happening, their grandmother too sweet to recognize Hesher’s crassness. This suspension of reality throughout the film, be it Hesher’s ability to apparently disappear into thin air, his ability to track T.J. wherever he is like they have some sort of telepathic link (maybe he’s Batman), or his frequent perusing through the halls of T.J.’s school, smoking and disheveled, which nobody seems to notice, none of this has a real place or explanation in the film. Unless the writers of the movie were trying to convey some sort of ham-fisted symbolism or theme throughout the film, Hesher’s character continues to fail on many levels, but mainly to really have a point, and I found myself ridiculously bored because of it. This leads me to another aspect of Hesher that I found trying, the pacing.
Hesher often progresses in bursts of tedium and the ridiculous. Normally, where a movie about the loss of a family member would try and have a scene of dramatic brevity, or perhaps a funny scene (considering the film was advertised as a comedy), it just doesn’t. There is rarely any comedic relief or an exciting element in the film to keep the viewer glued, instead it involves a bunch of sad characters that are “misunderstood” (but I think that mainly has something to do with how boring the characters are) trying to find their place in a harsh world, or at least that’s the closest conflict I could decipher. T.J. begins to develop a crush on a young woman who saves him from his schoolyard bully, and I thought the film may turn into a love story of some kind between T.J. and this older woman, Nicole (Natalie Portman), but it never really pans out, not to mention I didn’t care about it happening because of how dreadfully boring of a character she is. Natalie Portman’s talent is completely wasted in the film, and I assumed she must have been doing a favor for someone with the role she was given. You could literally remove every scene she has in the film and it would have little effect on the rest of the film besides a minor conflict between T.J. and Hesher which is very trite.
I suppose what boggles down Hesher’s pacing the most is the lack of character development. I wanted to identify or empathize with the characters on screen like most great films often allow me to do, but all of the characters seemed to have cookie-cutter indie film qualities I had seen before. They’re very sad losers, and they need some outside entity to help them cope with reality. I thought Hesher would be able to act as the opposing force to these characters but instead Hesher destroys a lot of people’s property, has nothing insightful to say, and does not care about anything or anyone around him. There is no reason driving him to do any of these things, and it allows for his acts of lunacy that could prove pretty interesting to be very nonsensical and tedious. Hesher’s gimmicks and antics wear thin very quickly. I suppose I wanted his character’s insanity to have a purpose within the story. The same can be said for T.J. who is supposed to be the protagonist of the film; I wanted to care, but I could never really find enough about him or his father that spurred me to hope they succeed. There is a decent sub-plot between Hesher and T.J.’s grandmother (the only character I really enjoyed). This is the only real part of the film that tries to have emotional weight or the audience identify with Hesher as a tortured soul instead of a sloppy redneck. He tries to connect to her through a strange metaphor about T.J. as a strong little kid, but by this point in the film it’s just too little too late. Hesher’s biggest flaw is relying on a character like Hesher to keep people interested, more time should have been spent making T.J. identifiable and likable, and then I might have enjoyed the film a bit more.
(5/10)
