I usually try to be as open as possible to all kinds of movies because there are some of them out there that are really hard to near-impossible to watch without a chaser and heart medicine ready at hand. However, once in a while there comes a movie that in trying to push the envelope of visual storytelling manages to out-do itself and alienate its audience. It's as if the director and creator -- this being the writer -- had some perverse enjoyment in focusing on the ugliest parts of humanity and not only not bring a solution, but show this no-way-out cul-de-sac as casually as an ironic twist.
Thank God I didn't go to the theatres when this movie was playing at the Landmark in mid-March. As much as I would like to play the part of the mediator and see some good within its images, I can't. THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS is akin to an art exhibit that showcases paintings and sculptures so bizarre, so hideous, it's best to bypass it altogether and forget its nasty vibration even exists. To avoid the red "Stop" light that it emanates is to know that in one way or another, you will run the risk of seeing something so detestable it will take willpower to shake it off and cleanse yourself.
Are there any surprises within this horrific excuse for a movie? Well... not really. The story can be summed up in one sentence: a boy named Jeremiah is taken away from his foster home by his drug-addicted, self-loathing mother and for 98 minutes gets tortured by everyone with no end in sight. That's it. There's nothing else, no redeeming points; Argento and JT Leroy's universe is one that wallows in its sadism towards the one character who can't defend himself. Like MIRAGE, people who try to help are equally inept, but here they're also willing to tweak the Jeremiah's pain a little more. Winona Ryder (for example) plays an extremely creepy psychologist who talks in baby-speech, condescending to the umpteenth degree, and the camera more than one focuses on her mouth as it bares its teeth against the near catatonic Jeremiah. His grandparents (Peter Fonda and Ornella Mutti) take him in but theirs is a much greater evil that uses God as an all-punishing deity. (One of the modes of punishment includes an older boy (Ben Foster) placing Jeremiah inside a tub filled with scalding hot water and scraping his private parts with something painful. Later, in a scene that wouldn't look out of place in an erotic drama, he tells the boy, "That wasn't so bad, wasn't it?" There are more ways to rape someone. Foster's character clearly looks like he's enjoying his time.) A minor character offers him some gum in a supermarket and looks freakishly scary in her couple of seconds of screen time. Even at the end, when the boy has landed in a hospital, a nurse displays no kindness to him, but pushes his head so he can see his sadistic fundamentalist grandmother as she dryly tells him what became of his mother.
In the real world, this wouldn't happen. It would be time, sooner of later, when social services would intervene and render Jeremiah's family incapable of coming near him due to the pain they've inflicted on him. The mother and the grandparents might even face jail time. The social workers would face severe charges against them. I'm not being an idealist: this is the truth, plain and simple. But this is Argento and Leroy's story, and in their world, there is no escape but blood red birds that appear as a nightmare whenever there's to be a bout of violence -- predictably directed at Jeremiah. If Argento wanted to talk about her own demons -- she claims she has many -- she might as well done a companion film to her SCARLET DIVA, not made a movie that is gut-wrenching. If an artist's work says a lot about its creator, I wouldn't want to be near her, or the Leroy, the author of this execrable "story". Like Roger Ebert I hope none of the boys playing Jeremiah were hurt in the process of making this film. Child actors normally don't know what they're supposed to be showing, and only later, when the veil of innocence gets ripped off do they realize what they've been subjected to in the name of a performance.
I realize these things do happen to the undeserving children and most end in the evening news or on investigative programs about child disappearances. There's a book out there, "A Boy Called It" that tells the harrowing tale of one boy who went through what no child should ever go through. At least this book is a real account and has a purpose. JT Leroy's account that this was based on real events is a sham, much like James Frey stating his book "A Million Little Pieces" was a collection of memoirs, and has no more purpose than to repulse.
Thank God I didn't go to the theatres when this movie was playing at the Landmark in mid-March. As much as I would like to play the part of the mediator and see some good within its images, I can't. THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS is akin to an art exhibit that showcases paintings and sculptures so bizarre, so hideous, it's best to bypass it altogether and forget its nasty vibration even exists. To avoid the red "Stop" light that it emanates is to know that in one way or another, you will run the risk of seeing something so detestable it will take willpower to shake it off and cleanse yourself.
Are there any surprises within this horrific excuse for a movie? Well... not really. The story can be summed up in one sentence: a boy named Jeremiah is taken away from his foster home by his drug-addicted, self-loathing mother and for 98 minutes gets tortured by everyone with no end in sight. That's it. There's nothing else, no redeeming points; Argento and JT Leroy's universe is one that wallows in its sadism towards the one character who can't defend himself. Like MIRAGE, people who try to help are equally inept, but here they're also willing to tweak the Jeremiah's pain a little more. Winona Ryder (for example) plays an extremely creepy psychologist who talks in baby-speech, condescending to the umpteenth degree, and the camera more than one focuses on her mouth as it bares its teeth against the near catatonic Jeremiah. His grandparents (Peter Fonda and Ornella Mutti) take him in but theirs is a much greater evil that uses God as an all-punishing deity. (One of the modes of punishment includes an older boy (Ben Foster) placing Jeremiah inside a tub filled with scalding hot water and scraping his private parts with something painful. Later, in a scene that wouldn't look out of place in an erotic drama, he tells the boy, "That wasn't so bad, wasn't it?" There are more ways to rape someone. Foster's character clearly looks like he's enjoying his time.) A minor character offers him some gum in a supermarket and looks freakishly scary in her couple of seconds of screen time. Even at the end, when the boy has landed in a hospital, a nurse displays no kindness to him, but pushes his head so he can see his sadistic fundamentalist grandmother as she dryly tells him what became of his mother.
In the real world, this wouldn't happen. It would be time, sooner of later, when social services would intervene and render Jeremiah's family incapable of coming near him due to the pain they've inflicted on him. The mother and the grandparents might even face jail time. The social workers would face severe charges against them. I'm not being an idealist: this is the truth, plain and simple. But this is Argento and Leroy's story, and in their world, there is no escape but blood red birds that appear as a nightmare whenever there's to be a bout of violence -- predictably directed at Jeremiah. If Argento wanted to talk about her own demons -- she claims she has many -- she might as well done a companion film to her SCARLET DIVA, not made a movie that is gut-wrenching. If an artist's work says a lot about its creator, I wouldn't want to be near her, or the Leroy, the author of this execrable "story". Like Roger Ebert I hope none of the boys playing Jeremiah were hurt in the process of making this film. Child actors normally don't know what they're supposed to be showing, and only later, when the veil of innocence gets ripped off do they realize what they've been subjected to in the name of a performance.
I realize these things do happen to the undeserving children and most end in the evening news or on investigative programs about child disappearances. There's a book out there, "A Boy Called It" that tells the harrowing tale of one boy who went through what no child should ever go through. At least this book is a real account and has a purpose. JT Leroy's account that this was based on real events is a sham, much like James Frey stating his book "A Million Little Pieces" was a collection of memoirs, and has no more purpose than to repulse.