CLEAN, SHAVEN
by Kevin Koehler
“I Can Help Make the Dream That Obsesses You Come True Quickly.” So
reads a newspaper advertisement, spread across a schizophrenic man’s
car window. Every glass surface on the vehicle, including rear and
side-view mirrors, is covered in crumpled paper torn from a tabloid
supermarket rag. Peter (Peter Greene, known to most as Zed from Pulp
Fiction) doesn’t like to see his own reflection. He drives
along in his cocoon, insulated with monster babies, aliens, Elvis,
and Playboy Playmates on killing sprees. Perhaps paper reflects better
than glass.
Peter has other idiosyncrasies, to put it mildly. His morning coffee
is poured into three cups, with great effort made to ensure equal
levels of milk and sugar. He carries with him a torn photograph of
a baby girl, probably his own (a plot device revisited in director
Lodge Kerrigan’s later picture, Keane), but we have
to be careful with our assumptions. He also believes there to be
a transistor under one of his fingernails, placed there during a
scarring mental hospital sojourn. There’s a corresponding receiver
in his scalp - his attempts to remove these items are some of the
more unsettling things you’ll see put to film. Whether he succeeds
or not is a matter a perspective, much like the rest of Clean,
Shaven. It works well enough for him, so judge not lest ye be
judged.
Peter’s senses, like our own, are unreliable, colored by preconceptions
and social forces. What we experience is not objective – Clean,
Shaven demonstrates this, not simply by submerging us in Peter’s
warped, subjective point of view, but with reminders that our own
point of view (specifically in regards to Peter) is warped as well.
Guilt and innocence, as much as these concepts exist, are not so
easily determined. Neither are “crazy” and “sane” (indeed,
Clean, Shaven is most effective when we’re forced to reexamine
our own preconceived notions about mental illness). Life is often
a collection of random images and sounds, white noise that can overwhelm
us if we let it. Our ability to hear, and process what is heard,
is based as much on what we tune out as what we tune in. Peter can’t
tune things out and for that he is “sick.” We who are “healthy” are
better at this, but I wonder how much better.
Clean, Shaven has a plot, barely (running time is a fleeting
80 minutes), centering on two parallel quests: Peter’s search
for someone who may or may not be his daughter and a police detective
searching for Peter in connection with a murdered girl. The two men
share some overt similarities – obsession with procedure and
minutiae, the corporeal, proneness to violent outbursts. Kerrigan
is a smart director, so this kind of narrative/character congruity
(cop and criminal are of one mind), lazy cliché in the hands
of another, is at least tolerably subtle here. I imagine it’s
simply a nod to genre, or even an indictment of audience expectations.
Perhaps it’s filmmaker immaturity (it is his first picture,
after all), but I’m willing to give Kerrigan the benefit of
the doubt.
That’s my own prejudice, but at least I’m honest about
it.
Interesting footnote: In 2005, John Waters was asked to curate a
series of films, with introduction and commentary, for “America’s
premier gay television network” Here! TV. John Waters Presents
Movies That Will Corrupt You ran thirteen pictures, all with
positive gay themes, the two notable exceptions being Irreversible (whose
homophobic content frankly makes it a surprising selection to me)
and Clean, Shaven.
© Pretentious Musings. This review may not be reprinted, in
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