"Boys Don't Cry" is at times appalling, brutal, cold, disturbing, exhausting, fierce, grueling, harrowing. It runs the alphabet of dark emotions that are all equally upsetting, for no reason more than the fact that its story is true.
Unfortunately, not many know about Teena Brandon, a hot-blooded Nebraskan in her early 20s who passed herself off as a man (named Brandon Teena) and was ultimately raped and murdered right before Christmas 1993 when her secret was discovered. Now that it has finally arrived in Charlottesville, more viewers can learn Brandon's story.
"Boys," Kimberly Pierce's stunning directorial debut, rises above mere tabloid crime story or docudrama mentality, and finds hope from its stark subject matter. She follows the last days of Brandon (who chose to live his life as a male and for the rest of this review will be referred to as such) with passionate reverence; it's the same passion that Brandon himself felt for Lana Tisdel (Chloe Sevigny).
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Lana represents Brandon's fairy tale come true, and when he runs away from Lincoln to Falls City, Neb., Lana's home represents to him the Magic Kingdom. There are other members of Brandon's reconstructed mythology: a fairy godmother (Lana's unnamed alcoholic mother, played by Jeannetta Arnette), a doting princess (friend Candace, played by Alicia Goranson), and two princes (buds Tom and John, played by Brendan Sexton III and Peter Sarsgaard).
Pierce's script, co-written with Andy Bienen (who graduated from the University with an English degree), addresses the deceptive contradictions that come from appearance. To the outside observer, Brandon's "family" is a bunch of ne'er-do-wells: they drink, they drug, they dropped out of school and they have criminal records. But Brandon doesn't see them as people with no way out. For him, they're a way into a family, proof of the acceptance and belonging that has evaded Brandon.
The heart of "Boys" beats in Hilary Swank, who has the Herculean task of portraying Brandon (and Teena) without a hint of artifice. Amazingly, she succeeds. Had she not received the Best Actress Oscar two weeks ago, it would have rendered the entire award system moot.
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But Brandon isn't the typical transvestite role that actors love to play for laughs. He suffered from a sexual identity crisis, and Swank shows that Brandon's heart aches with desire for discovery - of his world, of the others in it, but most importantly of himself.
We also see the charm that Brandon radiated. Brandon was truer to himself as a man than he ever was as Teena, and by living as a man he was not in disguise, but was shedding his mask. Brandon was believable as a man not because of his deepened voice, close-cropped hair or assured swagger (not to mention other physical adjustments that Pierce treats with appropriate care and detail), but because it all jelled into an air of confident exhilaration.
This confidence is why Lana fell in love with him. Brandon's openness and sensitivity, and his desire to be important to Lana served as a stark contrast to the rough-and-tumble guys (like John) with whom she was used to coupling.
And it's also what drew men like Tom and John to Brandon. They felt a kindred spirit and grew to love him as a brother. However, when they learned the truth, they turned on him out of fear about what it meant about their own masculinity; it was an inner threat directed outward.
There's no getting around it: "Boys" is tough to sit through and it is impossible to enjoy. It forces us to endure Pierce's magnifying glass, examining the dark yet inevitable side of human nature.
But there is a soft side to balance "Boys," provided by the pure love between Brandon and Lana. Sevigny also received an Oscar nomination for latching onto Lana's optimism. Bruised by child-like naïveté and trust, her lip-synch to "The Bluest Eyes in Texas" is a quiet paean for all lonely hearts. It's what bonds her to Brandon in the first place, as well as what blinds her from the truth about his anatomy.
However, whereas Lana suppresses her longing to escape her stifled world (perfectly captured by Jim Denault's time-lapse photography), Brandon acts upon it. He reconstructs his own history but finds himself still unable to control the environment around him. Tom and John's desire to control their world causes them to destroy what they cannot comprehend.
There's another moral to be found in Pierce's dauntless tale that lends its tragedy a sense of triumph. She tells us that there is a price to be paid for shirking society's rules and abiding by one's own; but that is the price of glory.
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