Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie''s plot.
It would be an easy thing to declare that the underlying theme in the film The Mudge Boy is about the early stirrings of gay behavior in an adolescent boy whoat least to others, including his own fatherconsider him just a little too sissy for his own good. But that explanation, in my opinion, lacks both subtlety and oversimplifies the story portrayed in this film.
Duncan Mudge (Emile Hirsch) is a teen-aged farm boy whose mother has recently died at an early age of a heart attack. Suddenly, Duncan and his farmer father, Edgar (Richard Jenkins), are left to fend for themselves. With the sudden absence of a feminine touch around the house, tradition-bound domestic duties fall into Duncans lap. He accepts them without complaint, and with an ease that his father finds disconcerting. Duncan can even sit in his late mothers chair at the dinner table and perform an uncanny impersonation of her as she complains of Edgars chronic lack of verbal engagement in the family conversation. This sort of dead-ringer mimicry of one's parent is certainly believable when a daughter stands in for a mother, or a son a father; but a son doing his dead mother? Things appear to be amiss in the Mudge household. This emulation of mother continues as Duncan also takes over her task of delivering eggs to the locals. Wearing her old battered hat, and riding her girls bicycle, he even adopts one of her favorite hens as his constant companion and mascot on his delivery route.
But where this film diverges from other coming-of-age gay stories is that sexual urge has very little to do with what drives Duncan. His only contacts with others his age are with a gaggle of ner-do-wells who cruise, drink and cavort with a couple of small-town floozies. So, his outlets for fulfillment appear to be narrow. But then things become complicated.
This complication becomes evident when he starts hanging around with a local boy named Perry (Tom Guiry); a brutish, sinewy and virile youth who mucks up after his drunken fathers milk cows and parades his oversized manhood for anyone to see. Duncan looks and he even looks when Perry is being um obliged by one of the willing girls. But Duncan and Perry have a great deal in common. They are both at that awkward age where alliances, loves and desires are becoming set in stone. Perry sees a fellow wounded creature in Duncan. Duncan sees someone that he can perhaps love.
And it is this absence of a nurturing parental love that is having a profound effect upon Duncans desires for physical love. Writer/director Michael Burke has compiled a subtly complicated story of how a boys budding desires can often become indistinguishable between physical attraction and childish emulation for a missing parent. In this regard I believe his obsession with his dead mothers clothes become less a desire to gender switch, or perhaps play the role of submissive, than it is to hold her close to his heart; to mourn the loss of her wit and love something that is missing in his relationship with his father.
The acting in this film is subtle and superb. Jenkins Edgar is a man who knows nothing but the demands of farm life and the necessity of maintaining order in his narrow universe. When the presence of his dead wifes things becomes a nuisance to him he deals with them in the most direct fashion that he is capable of understanding. This only increases Duncans attachment to them. Young Hirsch beautifully plays his Duncan as a youth whose arrested maturity stems from his social isolation and sexual ambivalence. The keeping of the pet chicken and his affinity not simply for womens clothing, but specifically for his mothers clothing, attest to the fact that Duncan hasnt broken with the past; hasnt quite made that transition from childhood to adulthood yet. Guirys character of Perry is even more profound in his ambivalence. At one point he is Duncans best friend, willing to overlook his weirdness, his odd attachment to the chicken and his lack of curiosity toward girls. But it is Perrys own complicated attachment to Duncan that is the deeper study in sexual parameters. His is a story unto itself.
The creative team of Director Burke, and Stanley Tucci, who surprises us in his role as Executive Producer, have taken the staid, bucolic setting of the middle-American farm and made it a hotbed of adolescent sensuality. Even Burkes directing style, which mostly consists of holding his camera steady to frame his scenes in a wheat field, a cluttered old barn or upon the creaky floors of an old fashioned parlor creates a story held in suspension; a relatively undated study of the clash of youth with the bone-weary demands of farm life and its incompatibility as a medium for social and sexual growth.
Recommended:
Yes
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age
The Mudge Boy chronicles the troubled life of Duncan Mudge, a 14-year-old-misfit. Duncan, while vying for the attention of his vacant father, struggle...More at HotMovieSale.com
The Mudge Boy - Dvd - Ryan Donowho,meredith Handerhan,beckie King,emile Hirsch,tom Guiry,richard Jenkins,pablo Schreiber,zachary Knighton,michael Burk...More at Target
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.