river's edge

I have seen hundreds of films, and loved many. But very few have affected me as powerfully as seeing River’s Edge in 1987 did. An excellent article published Saturday in Salon has me thinking about the film again, but in truth it is never very far away, even though the last time I saw it was probably in 1991 or so. Certain works of art burn so deeply into one that they are always a part of you.

For those unfamiliar, a brief plot synopsis: based loosely on a true story, high school burnout John murders his girlfriend Jamie. He tells his friends, seemingly unconcerned about what he's done, even perhaps a bit proud. Leader of burnouts Layne (Crispin Glover in possibly the most powerful performance of the decade) attempts to rally the group of friends (which includes Matt, played a by pre-fame Keanu Reeves) to keep the murder a secret and protect John. Matt contemplates going to the police. Eventually Fenk (played by Dennis Hopper), the local weed dealer in love with his blow-up doll and a one-time murderer himself, gets involved. The teens, outside of Layne, are mostly unconcerned about the whole thing. It is a movie about emptiness.

I do not use the term burnout in derogatory fashion; these are people I know and that’s why this movie hit me so powerfully--I was just coming into high school when I first saw it. Burnout is the label given to those adult society would just as soon forget exist. In the context of the Reagan 80’s, being a burnout was an acknowledgment of the emptiness and felt like the only honest reaction to a society that was corrupt, hypocritical and interested primarily in the attainment of material wealth, which kids like me knew would never be within our reach.

River’s Edge is a cinematic work of art without peer. I have argued in the past that the two visual images that best capture what growing up in the 80s felt like are 1) Layne, exhausted beyond life, falling asleep at the wheel at an empty intersection while Slayer blares through the crappy stereo, not even the violence of the music enough to bridge across the exhaustion, and 2) the recurring motif of the changing traffic light in Twin Peaks (which, admittedly, was not made until 1990 but feels very much a product of the 1980s.) I often watched River’s Edge back-to-back or close to Blue Velvet, the only other movie that could challenge River’s Edge as far as capturing the small-town emptiness of decade. But whereas Blue Velvet is an abstract tone poem, poetic even as it is disturbing (and shot through with a misogyny I find deeply uncomfortable as an adult, even though I very much admire David Lynch), River’s Edge is stark, bleak, nihilistic. Like Requiem for a Dream (the book or the movie), you leave River’s Edge profoundly disturbed. You want to have a reaction, but you are too shell-shocked.

It may not be possible for River’s Edge to have that kind of impact on a viewer today. One reason is that Keanu Reeves is now quite famous, and I think it would be hard to forget you were watching him—that’s the problem with being an actor with a celebrity persona. It’s why Jack Nicholson and Robert DeNiro can only play the same notes in a movie—you never believe you are watching anyone but them. The character they play is irrelevant. (Hell for me is having to watch Jack Nicholson in any movie.) Keanu Reeves is forever seared in our brains as dopey Ted, the guy from Speed, the guy from The Matrix. The butt of thousand jokes about his (lack of) acting ability. Yet in this film, he is perfect for the character, who it might said has the closest thing to a conscience in the film. But should I revisit the film, something I’m thinking of doing now that it’s (finally!) out on DVD, I suspect I will struggle with forgetting the entirety of his career and seeing him simply as Matt.

River’s Edge is a movie about the void, and how confronting that void and finding your soul empty can drive you to desperate acts in an attempt to feel something, anything. This is, I think, some of the most fertile territory the horror field can explore when it gets away from its standard good vs. evil framework—but River’s Edge is not a horror movie, though I’d argue it’s far more terrifying than one. Because, suggests the film, even the act of murder is not enough to break through the emptiness. The void doesn’t react. The universe is not concerned with you or your actions, and nothing you do matters: one definition of nihilism. Yet in the final survey, I don’t think River’s Edge is a nihilistic movie, bleak as it is. Layne, no matter how wrong his motivations, is trying to shatter that boredom, push away the emptiness, and shows a measure of loyalty to a friend where most would recoil. Matt struggles with his conscience; he knows this is all wrong, somehow, even if he has trouble pushing himself to do anything about it. Feck really did love his ex that he murdered. The movie itself ends on a note that, if not hopeful, at least has a small measure of dignity. When your life has been broken beyond repair before it has actually begun, a small measure of dignity is the greatest of achievements.

Does it sound strange to say I feel close the characters of this movie, all of whom are unsympathetic to varying degrees? It hits close to home, as the saying goes. “There but for the grace of God…” But there is no grace, no God in this world. Just the void. I am fortunate to not have scraped this close to the emptiness; arguably the biggest issue in my life has been that I feel too much, not too little. But the exhaustion in Layne’s speeding eyes? I know that exhaustion. It’s an exhaustion beyond fear, out there where there aren’t any stars and you are completely alone. I can understand the actions (or lack thereof) of the characters in River’s Edge without condoning them. One of the biggest issues with virtually every “teen” movie ever made is that it reduces the complexities of life to a series of trite either/ors for both adults and teens. River’s Edge does not. Strip away the more salacious elements of the story (chiefly, the murder) and you find that these were the kids of the 80s, the kids America left behind. Alone, with no tools, no family in any tangible sense, not even sure how to reach out to each other. Ritual is but an empty gesture when there is no hope.

I am drawn to art that pushes me into uncomfortable places, that provides no easy answers. River’s Edge was one of my earliest and best teachers. On the screen, it reflected a world that I knew, and by doing so suggested that telling the story can itself be a dignified, life-affirming act. There may be no easy answers in this film, but for an hour and a half, it gives a voice to those who lost theirs in the void. And it never once insults my intelligence or takes a condescending, moralizing tone towards these lost souls. Of such difficult and unpleasant complexities powerful art can be forged, and in the process offer a note of growth, of hope. And that is no small thing.

This post was written while listening exclusively to Slayer.