THE PAPERBOY B
USA (107 mi) 2012 ‘Scope d: Lee
Daniels
The recipient of some of the worst reviews in print, a train
wreck alleged to be one of the worst and most forgettable films of the year, this
is instead a highly entertaining and juicy film noir, a candidate for a spot on
John Waters Top Ten films of the year, with enough repressed sexual dysfunction
and lurid southern atmosphere to rival any Tennessee Williams play. Reportedly offered to Pedro Almodóvar as his
first English-speaking feature film, after toying with the screenplay he
eventually declined, but certainly the raunchy tone of the material is there, based
on a novel by Pete Dexter who along with the director helped adapt the
screenplay, which is unashamedly trashy, B-movie material. Some may find the boundaries of bad taste
pushed to the fullest here, yet that is the point of the film, that people
require their “news” to be sanitized and cleaned up beyond description so that
it is no longer recognizable from its origins, where truth is a virtue that
exists only in concept, as there are so many powers in play desperate to spin
and alter the news to suit their readers.
While there is no attempt to add sanctimonious morality or a message to
this film, but this is ascertained strictly from the title of the film, and as
it concerns a family where the patriarchal father (Scott Glenn) runs a newspaper.
Set in a small town in Florida (though
filmed in Louisiana) during the late 60’s when New York Congresswoman Shirley
Chisholm can be seen delivering a speech on television, where by the early 70’s
she was one of the founding members of the Black Congressional Caucus and even
initiated a bid for the Presidency in 1972, surviving several assassination
attempts, running as the ideological opposite of race segregationalist
candidate from Alabama, Governor George Wallace, whose picture may be seen on
the walls of law enforcement officials.
This sets the scene for the existing racism that routinely exists in the
region, where Macy Gray steals the thunder from some of the bigger names,
playing Anita, the family maid, who takes the place of the missing mother to
Jack (Zac Efron), an impressionable teenage kid just out of high school who
also happens to be a paperboy.
Like a modern day MILDRED PIERCE (1945), Anita opens the
film awkwardly recounting her personal recollections of a local murder to a
journalist, where the film is a flashback of colorful events that she continues
to narrate throughout, often with a bewildered amusement. Jack’s older brother is Ward, Matthew
McConaughey, working for a Miami newspaper, returning to his home town
accompanied by a fellow black reporter, Yardley (David Oyelowo), supposedly
from London, where both are following the information offered to them by
Charlotte, Nicole Kidman, who believes the convicted murderer is innocent. Kidman, channeling Karen Black from FIVE EASY PIECES (1970), who interestingly did all her own hair
and make up due to budget restraints, is wonderful throughout as an oversexed
Barbie doll who writes letters to convicted criminals, becoming especially
infatuated with the letter of the cop murderer, Hillary Van Wetter (John
Cusack), believing she has finally found true love. When this motley crew visits the prisoner,
the over the top sexual explicitness of the visit is unprecedented, where
Charlotte literally gives herself to him, though there is no touching. Her sexual bravado instantly endures her to
Jack, who’s never seen anything like her, who thinks of her constantly as the
woman of his dreams, where she literally becomes his wish fulfillment
fantasy. But instead she instantly
befriends Jack, like a little brother, whose coming-of-age experience may
actually be the film’s central narrative. Early
in the film big brother Ward drives the action, where his regional knowledge
allows him to understand the backwards gutter mentality of many of the local
good ‘ol boys, where sleaziness is something they all seem to have in common,
though Yardley finds this particular local attribute somewhat pathetic, where
his education has allowed him broader views, but so many residents in small
towns only know their own regionalism, as for them, no outside world exists. Jack interestingly makes the news in amusing
fashion, where after a candidly sexual conversation with Charlotte at the
beach, he takes a swim and gets repeatedly stung by jelly fish, where the
instant cure is urination on the affected areas (similarly expressed in a Friends episode where Joey steps up to
the plate and rescues Monica), which Charlotte publicly and heroically
performs, making all the editions published by his own father.
While some of the best scenes exude personal familiarity
between Anita and Jack, it’s also clear the murky atmosphere under the surface is
seething with a suffocating claustrophobia, often retreating into the swamps
for more local color, as every character in the film has been seriously damaged
in some deeply affecting way, where Jack follows his brother’s footsteps until
Ward gets into a heap of trouble where he barely makes it out alive, the victim
of some starkly graphic, criminally inspired, brutally sadistic gay bondage,
literally forcing little brother to assert himself more due to his medical circumstances. Jack is the victim of the prevailing racial
attitudes where he stupidly embarrasses himself in front of Anita, but also
carries the baggage of abandonment issues due to the loss of his mother, while
Ward is on a self-destructive bent driven by his inability to accept the fact he’s
gay. Charlotte has such a low degree of
self-esteem that she hangs on literally every word of some of the lowest and most
depraved men on earth, driven to the point of delusion by her need to be
desired by men. When Jack offers his
love, she sees it as little more than child’s play. Yardley, like a modern day Mr. Tibbs, is
forced to take advantage of job opportunities that have routinely been denied
blacks, even if it means stepping on the backs of others to get there, losing
his moral compass in the process.
Hillary Van Wetter, on the other hand, is a swamp creature that lives
with the alligators, snakes, and incessant swarm of bugs, a primeval force of
nature that we’ve come to accept in Robert Mitchum’s roles in The
Night of the Hunter (1955) or CAPE FEAR (1962). Brought together by uncommon circumstances,
they all seem to bring out the worst in one another, where the insidious nature
of man is portrayed as little more than that of lowly animals, where it’s
questionable who we are and what we’ve evolved into. The film is more interested in capturing the
right tone and atmosphere, like CHINATOWN (1974) set in the swamps, filled with
Mario Grigorov’s original score and a collection of standard R & B hits
from the 60’s, where the interplay between characters is interesting and often hilarious,
leading to an unvarnished and uncompromisingly thrilling finale, where the
unexpected raises its ugly head and proclaims victory, where many of us may be
wondering what happened, and how did all this rarely seen material suddenly
appear before our eyes? Daring and
devious throughout, where Kidman especially is another force of nature onscreen,
credit is due for having the fortitude to approach this material head on without
studio imposed concessions.
