“Hesher” is one of those indie flicks that seems like it was made to please by being unpleasant. It threatens Puritan sensibilities, employs disgusting humor and dissects the dysfunctional family without remorseÂ. While these ingredients might have produced a wonderful film, they instead come out of the oven looking like an aimless tangle of cynicism and sentimentality.
The film begins on 13-year-old T.J. Forney’s (Devin Brochu) first day back at school since his mother’s death. T.J.’s father (Rainn Wilson) can barely communicate with anyone, instead nursing bottles of pills and sleeping on a couch all day.
T.J. wanders silently through life and tries in vain to defend himself against a pig-nosed bully who marked him as fresh meat. He falls for Nicole (Natalie Portman), a pretty, destitute cashier who complicates his already confusing life.
After an accident in a construction zone on the way to school, T.J. encounters a vagrant named Hesher (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who immediately starts following him. Then, without explanation, he moves into T.J.’s house and chaos ensues.
Long-haired, usually shirtless and rail-thin, Hesher is a 20-something heavy metal fanatic with a ratty old van full of porn and canisters of gasoline. His tattoos ““ a giant hand flipping the bird on his back and a stick figure blowing his brains out, to name a few ““ look like they were drawn with a permanent marker.
He’s the kind of guy whose profoundness amounts to comparing dead mothers to lost testicles.
While moralizing about “Hesher” might serve little, the story seemed more concerned with packing literal punches and sneaking in nasty jokes than actually looking at how a family deals with loss. Sympathy is mocked. If anything, the message seemed to be “Yeah, it sucks, but you need to get over it.” The apathy rings as insincere, if not painfully naive.
Gordon-Levitt shines as the foul-mouthed, sex-crazed, pyromaniac version of the troublemaker with a heart of gold. However, for a character that easily dominates every scene he was in, Hesher is disappointingly one-dimensional within the context of the film. He just doesn’t feel like the “heavy metal Mary Poppins” that director and writer Spencer Susser describes him as.
Susser intends for Hesher to teach T.J. and his father about tough love in the toughest of ways. The film is sprinkled with several car accidents, fires, explosions and fist fights; it feels as if T.J., his father, Hesher and Nicole are so numb that they can only communicate through a desperate language of violence.
The most genuine connection in the entire film exists between Hesher and T.J.’s grandmother, who looms at the dinner table that she fills with a home-cooked meal every night. Her loneliness goes unnoticed by all but Hesher. Together, they balance light and dark, managing to make one another laugh occasionally.
“Hesher” strains to be darkly humorous but ends up exploiting the audience’s sense of humanity. It aims to be irreverently wise but ends up being plainly ignorant about the grieving process.
Indulgently obscene moments lean awkwardly against the scenes with maudlin music and slow motion. At the end, we are left to wonder whether Hesher actually helped T.J. overcome his grief at all.
“Hesher” has its cathartic moments. Or maybe the audience so badly wants to see the grieving characters enact their sadness ““ instead of becoming blinded by it ““ that when they finally explode, it resonates all the more strongly.
The film leaves the audience wondering whether cheap pornography, light torture and random acts of arson realistically help a young boy cope with the death of his beloved mother. In “Hesher’s” world, a satisfying answer is foregone in favor of a few tasteless jokes.
Email Cruz at lcruz@media.ucla.edu.