Mean Creek (2004)
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC 16:9 | Cover | 01:29:44 | 6,09 Gb
Audio: English AC3 5.1/2.0 @ 448/192 Kbps | Subs: English
Genre: Crime, Drama
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC 16:9 | Cover | 01:29:44 | 6,09 Gb
Audio: English AC3 5.1/2.0 @ 448/192 Kbps | Subs: English
Genre: Crime, Drama
Director: Jacob Aaron Estes
When Sam Merrick is beaten up by local bully George Tooney, Sam's older brother Rocky and his friends Clyde and Marty plan to pretend it's Sam's birthday to "invite" George on a boat trip in which they would dare him to strip naked, jump in the lake, and run home naked. But when Sam, his girlfriend Millie, Rocky, and Clyde see George as not much of a bad guy, they want to call off the plan, but Marty refuses. Will the plan go ahead as planned?
IMDB
There's a fine tradition of bittersweet coming-of-age tales within cinema, stories of tormented teenagers who take on their little world and themselves to face a life-changing and often tragic event which leads them to taking their more mature place within society. Coppola's The Outsiders focused on a disaffected group of smalltown boys but many, as happens in native tribes with traditional rites-of-passage endurance tests, take their young protagonists out into the woods, facing the elements as well as their own insecurities, to build and test their character. Stand by Me, River's Edge, and Lord of the Flies are powerful yet moving examples of the sub-genre, and so too is Mean Creak , the debut feature from Estes.
Rory Culkin plays Sam, a small, intelligent boy who is constantly picked on by a bigger and nastier boy, George (Peck). Following a pummeling, Sam confides in Rocky (Morgan), his older brother. Rocky, macho and good-looking but less articulate and well on the road to nowhere, reacts angrily and, together with his friends, devises a plan to serve George a lesson. It is down to Sam to have reservations, succumbing with the words "let's hurt him without hurting him."
George is to be invited to a boat outing for Sam's "birthday", along with Sam, Sam's friend Millie (Shroeder), and Rocky and his cronies, where he will be stripped and forced to find his own way home along the banks of Oregon 's Lewis River .
Many scriptwriters could have presented a stereotypical portrait of a bully - one might even argue that George is a stereotypical bully. However, the film pivots around the fact that Estes has explored the psyche of such a person, presenting a complex and incredibly three-dimensional character. George, we discover, is a very lonely boy, an outsider who looks at the world through the lens of his video camera. His eye focuses on mundanities such as his bedroom, his street, his mother and one has the sense that he is trying to make sense of his place within that world, but at the same time is distanced from it.
Sam's offer of making peace and inviting him to his birthday is seized upon by George, and the would-be Machiavelli's are surprised when he cheerfully arrives on the day armed with a present for Sam and his video camera to capture the day's events. Even more so, he proves to be extremely polite, not to mention trusting and willing enough to divulge some of his innermost secrets, including details of his own learning difficulties.
Sam and most of the party vote to cancel the original plan. Unfortunately, Marty (Mechlowicz) - who is still angry at his father for committing suicide and needs a surrogate on whom to vent his rage - reveals all to George, leading to a verbal explosion in which George vehemently hurls insults at everyone, homing in on each of their weaknesses. The climatic result will change their lives forever.
Estes, who wrote as well as directed, won the Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting for the film, as well as the Humanitas Award at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. Drawing on his own experiences of being bullied, and bringing communal living conditions for his cast and team-building activities in the woods prior to shooting, he has created a remarkable film that handles it's subject matter sensitively, allowing the audience to empathise and sympathise with the characters, all of whom display a complex array of emotions and integrities. This is a moral tale that deals with the issues of right and wrong, and one's personal interpretation of this. Very often we act of our own agenda, imposing our own version of the truth on other people and thereby playing a hand in fate. What Mean Creek asks of the viewer is to consider the consequences of their actions, the laws of cause and effect. While the youngsters debate whether to go ahead with their planned treatment of George, we realise they are only able to do so because - albeit unknowingly - they were seen to change their own attitude towards him and he responds accordingly to their new goodwill. The lesson seems to be that we have it in our power to change things for the better - the coming-of-age element is whether will we respond to that or will we succumb to peer pressure and run with the crowd? If maturity is marked by strength of character rather than reaching a certain age, then the themes of the film are universal, not just for pubescent teenagers.
An eery sense of dread permeates the film, the stillness of the woods and the undulating river adding to the tension. Cinematographer Sharon Meir marries a hand-held camera with colour filters and drenched out film stock to create a film that is realistic yet tinged with nostalgia, making it accessible and contemporary but also other-worldly mythical.
Mean Creek is a good film by any standards - as a feature debut it is outstanding. Estes himself has certainly come of age.
Special Features:
- Audio commentary by writer/director Jacob Aaron Estes, editor Madeleine Gavin, director of photography Sharon Meir, actors Trevor Morgan, Ryan Kelley, Carly Schroeder and Josh Peck.
- Storyboard Gallery (11 images)
- Bonus Preview Trailers: "Enduring Love", "The Machinist", "The United States of Leland", "Love Me If You Dare", "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead", "Intimate Strangers", "Mean Creek: Soundtrack Spot"
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