Every now and then someone in “Hesher” will talk about metaphor, what metaphors mean and why we need them. Director Spencer Susser may be a little self-conscious on the subject, because his film contains a big, whopping metaphor that walks and talks.
His name is Hesher, a long-haired, tattooe
d headbanger who swaggers into the world of a sad little kid named T.J. (Devin Brochu). Hesher is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, an actor who has already established his bona fides as a performer of considerable range, from “Mysterious Skin” to “Brick” to “(500) Days of Summer.”
Hesher simply moves into T.J.’s home, without much resistance from the people living there. They probably need a little Hesher right now; a recent family tragedy has left T.J.’s dad (Rainn Wilson, from “The Office”) a depressed wreck, and grandma (Piper Laurie) seems to have checked out a long time ago.
Yeah, so, who (or what) is Hesher? For a while, director Susser teases us with the idea that Hesher could simply be a figment of T.J.’s imagination. But no, other people see him, too.
He acts like Lucifer, but he looks like Jesus. He says the foulest things imaginable, and he takes a cheerful attitude toward wrecking other people’s stuff. He’s like Ferris Bueller’s serial-killer cousin.
Also drawn into Hesher’s sinister wake is a supermarket checker (Natalie Portman), a mousy type who ought to be horrified by Hesher, but isn’t. She needs something in her life, too.
With a cast like this, “Hesher” must have something going for it. Portman contributes a nice little character piece, Rainn Wilson does spirited job of trying to break his “Office” mode (see also the recent “Super”), and Gordon-Levitt gives his all to a character who is, on the face of it, almost impossible to understand.
The idea of the mystery figure who struts in and changes a group of people has been done before (the 1968 film “Teorema,” with Terence Stamp, for instance), and Susser’s variation is as peculiar as it is entertaining. Hesher does things that don’t have any logic, and his cruelty washes over the family members as well as others.
But, hey, Susser warned us: This is a metaphor. Hesher’s the unfiltered, uncensored demon inside everybody, so he’s not supposed to act according to logic. If nothing else, this film will contribute a new descriptive term for that kind of amoral force of nature — because at some point in your life, you’ll probably run across a Hesher.
“Hesher”: three stars
Joseph Gordon-Levitt scores another impressive performance, this time as a mysterious, amoral stranger who barges in with a grieving family and changes their existence. The movie’s never going to explain this character, but it’s quite entertaining anyway, and Natalie Portman and Rainn Wilson provide strong support to Gordon-Levitt’s swaggering turn.
Rated: R for language, violence
Showing: Marysville, Meridian, Metro
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