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The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things
It seems that recently there is a lot of news about authors falsifying their works. From newspaper stories in such illustrious publications as the New York Times to a famous incident involving the influential Oprah’s Book Club, more and more authors have been caught passing off fiction as biographical. In 2005 the published works of JT LeRoy where discovered to be a hoax perpetrated Laura Albert. Personal appearances by LeRoy where actually made by Savannah Knoop, the half sister of Albert.’s partner, Geoffrey Knoop. While Knoop has stated that Albert will never admit to the truth the allegations shook the literary world. Since LeRoy was the darling of such socially significant causes as HIV positive, transgender individuals and abused children, since the supposed author did not have any personal knowledge of this issues. One of the books in the series by LeRoy, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things has been turned into a film by writer-director Asia Argento. While the film cannot be classified as a biography it does work as a gritty, often brutal look at life on the streets. No matter how bad you may think your childhood was watching this movie will make you want to call your mother and thank her. Jeremiah (Jimmy Bennett/Cole and Dylan Sprouse) is seven years old and had been abandoned by his teen mother and was living in relative suburban comfort in a nice foster home. His world is pulled out from under him when his mother, Sarah (Asia Argento) reaffirms her parental rights and pulls him from his stable environment. One tip off that this was a work of fiction is no court no matter how lax would ever have given Sarah rights to any form of life higher than a bacteria. Sarah is a drug-addicted prostitute who when she is unable to find upscale work as a stripper lurks in truck stops offering discount carnal services to lonely and desperate truckers. Sarah has absolutely no maternal instincts. Jeremiah is given cold pasta right out of the can and is often reminded that Sarah wishes she had flushed him down the toilet. This is definitely not June Cleaver. While dumpster diving usually tides them over Sarah’s desperation for cash frequently gets the better of her. She sinks lower than most could imagine. She dresses Jeremiah up in a frilly slip with padded bra, slaps on a ton of makeup and pimps the cross dressed boy out. When Sarah meets Emerson (Jeremy Renner), a man she considers worthy of marriage (that is something more than a one night stand), the two lock Jeremiah up while they honeymoon in Atlantic City. As harsh as this seems it is actually better than some of the treatment Jeremiah received from Sarah’s boyfriends. More often than not she would push the men to the point of beating the child. When Sarah runs off on Emerson he returns and takes his anger out of Jeremiah in a particularly heinous manner. The boy winds up in the hospital and comes in contact with a therapist (Winona Ryder). The boy is then claimed by his overly zealous grandparents played to the hilt by Ornella Muti and Peter Fonda and moved to West Virginia. While this provides some rational for the way Sarah turned out it offers little relief for Jeremiah. The grandparents do offer some stability to the boy but once again Sarah shows up to retrieve him. The grandparents press the boy into evangelical service dressing in a suit and tie and making him preach on street corners. Jeremiah is tossed between two extremes in moral outlooks. Since both are at the utter extremes the boy is hard pressed to find any glimpse at normal family life. At this point Jeremiah would look at Dante’s Inferno and envy the bottom most ring of perdition. I have always felt that art, including that of the cinema, should invoke an emotion. There is no requirement for that emotion to be a positive one. Feelings of repulsion, disgust and horror are genuine and valid goals for a film. In this it succeeds. I have watched thousands of films in my life and thought I had seen it all. I was wrong; this film was so brutal I can’t imagine any director going beyond it. This film demonstrates how important it is to fund social programs for the rescue and care of abused children. When Asia Argento initiated this project the allegations of the validity of JT Leroy were not public knowledge. In this, Ms Argento was at the time working on a story she felt was an honest representation of an individual’s brutal existence. The revelation of the apparent hoax may cast doubt on the source material but not the motivations of Ms Argento. Asia Argento is very family with horror. As the daughter of the notable Italian horror flick master Dario Argento. She grew up watching her father delve into unimaginable fantasy and horror. She must have kept her young eyes open; you can see some of her father’s influence here. Ms Argento also has some experience in unusual family relationships although nothing like the ones shown here. Her father has directed his tattooed daughter in several explicit scenes. Argento paces this film in an uneven fashion; always keep the audience on the edge with disturbing, jarring motion. The camera is used as a voyeur, a peep show hole in the wall that provides the most unsettling images possible. Like her father she has an eye for style. Instead of lush period sets she uses the streets and seedy hotels to paint a picture of despair. Argento sets the mood by assaulting the senses. The eyes take in the drab, dirty rooms as the ears are pounded with punk style music. You try to look away but your heart goes out to Jeremiah, hoping that someone will save him. Looking at a seven year old boy pimped out in garish drag is almost too much for the audience to bear. There has been talk about a rating beyond R for adult themed films. This movie is the perfect example. The R rating just doesn’t seem to do it. The DVD is released by Palm Pictures. The reproduction is better than smaller budget flicks receive. The 1.85:1 anamorphic video an accurately displays the grain and variations of the color saturation used by the director. The Dolby 5.1 audio provides a very narrow sound stage. This was effective since it provided a closed in feel that added to the despair of the film. There are a few extras such as an audio commentary track by Asia Argento and producer Chris Hanley. They expound on the controversial material and making the film. There is also a featurette about the underground life style and several hidden features that was fun to locate. This is not a film for everyone, and that is an understatement. For those willing to put aside the norm and immerse in the darkest aspects of life, this will be of interest. Jeremiah 17:9 (KJV)
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