‘Hesher’ gives mourning the finger
In theaters Friday: Martha Marcy May Marlene [limited], Paranormal Activity 3, The Three Musketeers
New on DVD/Blu-ray: Bad Teacher, Page One, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Red State
If Joseph Gordon-Levitt was interested in keeping the dreaded typecast at bay after a few similar nice guy roles, he’s done so shockingly as the titular heavy metal ne’er-do-well in Hesher, a new indie drama out now on DVD. His co-star, Natalie Portman, who is the producer and has made Hesher the second feature film under her own Handsomecharlie shingle, also plays severely against type as a young check out girl, all meek and gangly behind thick librarian glasses. In the same vein, Rainn Wilson displays none of the lunacy or boisterous acumen that bubbles out in quirky nerdgasms as Dwight K. Shrute, in his role of a depressive widower at the top of Hesher’s maladjusted heap.
Hesher is an oddball character portrait and a darkly unique look at the grieving process that follows a young boy named T.J. (Devin Brochu in his first major role after a small appearance in In the Valley of Elah) who is on a quest to recover the totaled car his mother was driving when a horrific accident took her life. He needs the car to feel connected to her and will go to great lengths to save it from scrap.
After unwittingly leading local police to an abandoned house that shelters Hesher as an illegal squatter, T.J. feels bad enough to invite a guy that thoroughly frightens him to move into the family garage. A photo negative of Mary Poppins, Hesher takes it upon himself to mentor and befriend T.J. and help the boy and his father overcome their grief any way he can. A noble goal, but Hesher is not going to be recruited by Big Buddy any time soon.
He is a nightmare mentor, a walking perversion of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. He is unattached to nearly everything we use to define meaning in our lives and floats by completely in the moment and on impulse, for better or worse. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Hesher with an almost “Man with No Name”-level mystery about him, and how or why he developed into such an acidic malcontent and pyromaniac troublemaker is anyone’s guess.
Director Spencer Susser’s milieu is eerily similar to the work of Todd Solondz or Terry Zwigoff, though he shows an unblinking bravery for staying with a scene long enough to let its every gritty nuance sink in with the viewer. Gordon-Levitt gets the show-off role here, but it is young Brochu who is in nearly every scene. The boy’s quiet longsuffering and devil-may-care mission anchors the narrative.
Hesher is an emotional roller coaster with absolutely no sentimentality. In its attempts to put garish words to what others are thinking, as Hesher often does, the film is emotion and angst laid bare. And it is an intriguing, profanely shocking and heroic film that in no way is made for everyone to see. This is niche moviemaking at a head-banging zenith.
