Superheroes

I haven't seen this in a theater, only on a DVD, but I was very moved by the story and the performances. Without giving anything away, I can say it is the story of a soldier who comes back from Iraq. Dash Mihok (he was in The Thin Red Line - another really impressive performance as a soldier by him, I thought) plays the soldier and I think this movie is worth seeing for many reasons (like it's message for one), but his performance is one of the top reasons. I hope he can win some award for this. I have seen him in other films but I didn't recognize him at first and I thought (and so did my friend) that he was actually a vet, not an actor. The actor who plays his friend is also excellent, Spencer Clark, who has been in lots of films. You'll recognize his face. The story is well told and the film looks beautiful (which is nice and impressive for such a sad story), and I found many of the scenes very surprising and shocking. It is slow at the beginning, but their friendship is very sad and moving, and the film's message is very powerful and worth everyone seeing.

I saw this movie when it was screened as part of the Avignon film festival and it certainly deserves to find a wide audience. As a previous reviewer noted the film was greeted with deep emotion by the entire audience. It is a very moving and thoughtful film about the psychological cost of the war in Iraq and the toll it takes on those who return. While they may be physically (relatively) uninjured there are many deep wounds that need to heal. It has been far too easy for many of us to remain shielded from the impact or the cost of this war that is supposedly being fought on our behalf. While some of the stories of those dealing with physical injury have been told we are only beginning to grasp the psychological toll this war will leave as it's legacy for many years to come. The cinematography is stunning (it reminds me of the best Malick) and the two lead performances are memorable.

This (recently added to Netflix) film was like a stranger in a crowd to me. I don't recall having heard of it, yet it's now over a decade old. The brief, quirky preview which Netflix automatically played prompted my watch of it on a whim.

It is now one of my favourite movies.

Superheroes begins as it's peppered throughout, with vignettes of seemingly disconnected footage of a delicate and scarred resting body, three female-presenting improvisational dancers, and a tranquil, natural world, in raw but vibrant grain.

What this movie tackles is deeply nuanced and profound. Its main characters, Ben (Dash Mihok), a disabled young war veteran, and Nick (Spencer Treat Clark), an even younger aspiring filmmaker, meet and approach one another under tense and uncertain terms. What follows is a remarkably beautiful, tender, horrifying (in moments), authentic, and existential-crisis-inducing portrait of human pain and connection.

Both actors play their roles with vulnerability and full commitment. While Mihok's traumatized war veteran is much easier to read, Clark's subtly reflective and lonely documentarian can be read as forever pacing between more thoughts than even his overly talkative character can put together. While the movie won't necessarily stand up to "queer themes", it can absolutely be viewed through a queer lens.

It's actually thanks in part to a lack of overt queer themes that this movie's messages can resound as more universally human than specific to demographics, when viewers may already have to reach to relate to Mihok's predicament. The lonely souls theme is strong, as is that of the difficulties of forming adult friendships. While some who have certain strong feelings about politics (war, specifically) may feel discrete moments of the film have an "agenda", this really isn't what the movie is trying to talk about. A broken and stranded person is the point, and the war veteran route is an effective analogue.

The psychology of the film is kept to a minimum, and its heart is what ends up on bare display. I can appreciate how some may feel Clark's character is bumbling, and amplifies some of the film's clumsier setups, but I believe this is intentional. This is not in any way meant to feel like a Hollywood movie, nor is it even supposed to feel like a movie. The presence of Nick's camera in most scenes subverts the very idea of this being "a film", with careful choices made whenever he chooses to let go of the device.

Superheroes is meant to be taken as a depiction of real complex suffering and love, that exists all around us, and runs wild when we don't come close to care for it. These aren't meant to be molded characters, the narrative isn't meant to follow a favoured formula, and the viewer isn't meant to have a fortune cookie answer to how it is they ought to feel about what they just witnessed. If you're looking for an easy movie with easy answers, keep looking. This movie is a treasure for those who aren't afraid to feel both horrible and hopeful for fragile humanity.

Although this film is well intentioned it does have some amateurish qualities to it. It is about an Iraq war veteran and he is experiencing post traumatic stress. Dash Mihok plays this role of the returning veteran very well – which is less than I can say for the person (Spencer Clark) who is allegedly filming the documentary on him.

The style is cinema-verite which I found gave a voyeuristic feel. Also there are these useless diversions – shots of the sky, the trees in the forest…. And what was the point of showing these ballet dancers? They had absolutely nothing to do with the topic. Plus some of the conversations with Spencer Clark seemed to drift needlessly – too much self-absorption.

But the overall theme of PTSD is very sympathetically handled – at times riveting.