Director Greg Araki, Still in Touch with Teen Angst
khmer
|
Saturday, February 26, 2011
|
0 comments
Gregg Araki may be more than three decades removed from the angst and alienation of his teenage and post-adolescent years. But that confusing and tumultuous period of life still resonates strongly for this one-time bad boy auteur whose name is synonymous with films about defiant young outcasts living on the edge of oblivion. Indeed, the subject of adolescent outsiders is a wellspring that Araki has returned to repeatedly throughout his career, in his brash yet brooding fantasias from the mid-90's - The Doom Generation and Nowhere - and in his latest endeavour, Kaboom. "When I was younger, I was extremely angst-ridden," says Araki, 51 and still boyish as ever, during a recent interview in Manhattan. "It's a very confusing time and a very dark time. I remember it being very traumatic. But then you look back in it from the perspective of middle age, and it's like, those are some of the best years of your life."
While films like The Doom Generation and The Living End are shot though with a grim, fatalistic world view and a pronounced nihilistic streak, Kaboom is suffused with a more buoyant, carefree and hopeful point of view. Araki says that when he made his earlier films, he was more "unmoored and angry", whereas Kaboom, he says, contains a "warmth and fondness towards the characters and what they're going through that's not in the earlier movies." Still, the film hasn't been dubbed an old-school Araki movie for nothing: apocalyptic scenarios, raging hormones, mutable sexuality, and an anarchic spirit permeate the proceedings.
Set at a Southern California art school, the film revolves around an adorable, ambisexual 18-year-old college kid named Smith (Thomas Dekker) as he navigates the roller coaster of his freshman year - from lusting after his dim-buld, shaggy-haired surfer roommate Thor (Chris Zylka), to hooking up with the free-spirited waif London (Juno Temple) and a stranger on a nude beach, to dishing about love and sex with his droll lesbian best pall Stella (Haley Bennett). This being an Araki film, Smith must also grapple with some strange and unsettling occurrences: haunting dreams about a red-haired woman, shadowy figures in animal masks stalking him across campus, a character with supernatural powers, and a conspiracy perpetrated by an apocalyptic cult. Says Dekker, "There aren't many other directors out there who make films about young people that don't end up talking down to them in some way. Gregg understands how to capture what young people are really feeling, thinking and going through."
In person, Araki proves to be an affable, engaging, and sharp-witted conversationalist - no evidence of a brooding auteur here. Still, there was a time when Araki was ridden with anxiety and dread. Back in 1992 The Living End confronted the then-raing AIDS epidemic with a story of two HIV-stricken young men burning across the country on a nihilistic road trip. The film explored the fear, isolation, and despair of gay male sexuality at the height of the AIDS crisis. "Young people today have no idea what it was like to be 25 or 30 years old and so terrified and preoccupied about death," Araki says. The film was lauded for it's bold originality and helped user in what came to be known as New Queer Cinema (which also included films by Gus Van Sant, Todd Haynes, and others). While the movement was only a blip on the cultural radar, Araki believes its legacy is perhaps longer-lasting. "The culture is changing so rapidly now, especially when it comes to gay rights and gay representation in the media. And I think New Queer Cinema definitely had an early part in that," Araki says. "I think if there wasn't a New Queer Cinema, there wouldn't be a Brokeback Mountain. These things feed off each other. It's all part of the same continuum."
Source: Boston.Com
Filed Under: Pictures
0 comments
Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed