`Clean, Shaven" is an attempt to enter completely into the schizophrenic mind of a young man who is desperately trying to live in the world, on whatever terms will "work" in his condition. It is a harrowing, exhausting, painful film, and a very good one - a film that will not appeal to most filmgoers, but will be valued by anyone with a serious interest in schizophrenia or, for that matter, in film.
What suffuses every moment of the movie is the constant agony he is in, because of the way his condition causes the everyday world or sensations to assault him. There is a gruesome moment when he cuts a fingernail loose from his finger (many viewers will close their eyes), as if the pain will for a moment free him from the greater pain of being alive.
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The movie is, more than anything else, an uncompromising experiment in creating, for the viewer, an idea of what schizophrenia is like. The writer and director, Lodge H. Kerrigan, has made a leap of imagination that is both courageous and empathetic: He doesn't see Peter from the outside, as a danger or a threat, but from the inside, as a suffering man who still retains those instincts that make us human, including love for our children.
That society cannot see him with the same empathy is perhaps inevitable. Peter is the kind of man we quickly cross the street to avoid. Now we understand how much he needs to avoid us, as well.
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http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbc ... 10301/1023 ]
Consider how mainstream movies depict violence. Bodies are chopped up, blown apart, and torn to pieces. Blood and gore flow as freely as water. Films like Interview with the Vampire are awash in a crimson tide, and no one thinks twice about it. Then along comes a film like Clean, Shaven, where nothing is gratuitous, and suddenly viewers are shocked. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer provoked a similar response, for the same reasons.
There's no denying that the film is disturbing, at times profoundly so. One scene in particular resulted in more than half the audience wincing, turning away, or leaving. Often, it's the simplest, most realistic forms of violence, when portrayed in such a vivid manner, that cause the stomach to churn. During Clean, Shaven's screening at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival, a member of the audience fainted. As a result of this single, thirty second sequence, which film maker Lodge Kerrigan refused to edit out, this movie took nearly eighteen months to acquire a distributor.
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It's always difficult to rate a film that, while powerful and well made, is an exercise in endurance. There are those -- even among the art-film crowd -- who will find this picture unbearable. Theaters will warn of its graphic content. Viewers will endlessly debate all the unanswered questions posed within. But no one who sits through this film is likely to forget it. Clean, Shaven is one of those rare movies that leaves an indelible imprint on anyone still watching as the closing credits roll.
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The last VOB could not be ripped, even my DVD player (Sony) had to skip it (CRC errors). It's just the end part of the credits, so no big deal.
