Boys Don't Cry
March 13, 2000
You want the facts? Go to the Internet Movie Database.
It's about cheap people leading cheap lives in cheap homes. I went because Hilary Swank won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for playing Brandon, the sexually confused girl at the center of the film. Also, Chloë Sevigny (his/her girlfriend Lana) got a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination and got a Golden Globes nomination (but lost there). The film has won a bundle of awards.
It's an ugly story about prejudice against Brandon, a girl pretending to be a boy in Nebraska. It's based on a true story, which I remember reading about in The New Yorker. As usual, the question in such cases is, "how could you not notice during sex," a question which the movie actually attempts to answer visually, but mostly psychologically.
I think the film comes close to imparting a sense of the awfulness of gender confusion. I've known two men who had sex changes. One of them I knew quite well as a guy. I have never met, before or since, anyone who was unhappier with the sexual hand nature dealt them. She's about a million percent happier and better adjusted as a woman. Same probably would have been true if Brandon could have afforded the operation.
I'll say this, you don't often get this close a look at America's trailer-park-dwelling underclass. The film, accurately I think, depicts the bad decisions and bad luck that put people on the bottom and keep them there. Some of the bad decisions stem from bad education, bad judgment, or lack of money. Some stem from all three. In any case, you watch in awe as they follow the inevitable logic of their station in life--straight into disaster. It's like a very good friend of mine, of whom it has been said, "he'll lie when it would be easier to tell the truth." In this case, Brandon will screw up when it would have been easier to do it right.
No child under 21 should see this film, and adults should only see it if they're interested in issues of gender identity or insist, as I do, on seeing the Oscar-nominated performances.
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