Clean, Shaven (1993) Lodge Kerrigan

I was walking around a video center figuring out what I would watch next.   When I got to the Criterion selection I looked around, and a movie jumped to my sight... I grabbed it, turned it around, read the synopsis and decided it was worth my while.  Gladly I was right.

Clean, Shaven is simply a great movie.  Visually and soundwise is mind blowing.  I loved the constant close-ups, the dutch angles, the car-travelings with only fragments of landscape to be seen, the feeling it gives you all of the above, as if the camera had been misplaced; the wires, the static, the murmurs, the lack of dialogues, the rhythm, the whole sound design, everything is simply great, for it goes hand-by-hand with the narrative and creates a fascinatingly morbid world.

Half way through the movie, I still wasn't sure what I was going to think about it in the end.  I had my doubts.  I thought maybe Kerrigan was just trying too hard for the story to work.  Some questions kept coming to my mind, like "why would they let him get out of the mental institution when he's clearly still mentally unstable?" or  "why would they let him behave like that at a public library?".  I'm still not sure that by the end I got the answer to my questions, but I think it has to do with the subjectivity of a schizophrenic.  Things are not meant to be clear.  Actually, things are not even meant to be real.  How could we take it all as utterly truthful facts when throughout the whole movie, the director keeps underlining the idea of it meaning to be completely subjective?

By the end of the movie I had this nostalgic/guilty state of mind. The movie reminded me of Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein.  Peter is a good guy at heart, just like Dr. Frankenstein's monster was, but they were both misunderstood.  They were so different to the rest, that people had to believe they were evil, because we're supposed to fear the unknown.  I couldn't help getting identified with both  Peter and the detective.  I think we all have one of each inside of us.  Most people end up killing their inner Peter because their just too afraid of it, of not understanding and controlling it... but I think we should give our inner Peter a chance to show us that he's not the bad guy, he's just different and confused.