Clean, Shaven (1995)

As Good As It Gets

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

A lot of fun.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

It opens with pure abstraction, sights, sounds, we think we hear ambient music but maybe it isn't. We are immediately disoriented by the first impression the film has on us. After all, this is what Peter Winter is accustomed to. This is the way he sees the world, just like many movies use technique to appear the way their main characters see the world. Peter is obviously disturbed. But what makes him more disturbed is that he is setting out into a world of which he has long not been part. Clean, Shaven consists of an overtly and insistently mediated reality, Peter at the center of it. We are meant to presume we understand the underlying context of what we see, but Peter's mental illness too often transforms the world into a disorienting barrage of sounds and images.Peter Greene, an always memorable character actor whose filmography is too short, delivers a formidable rare bird of a performance. He is mournfully abnormal. He is possibly dangerous, indeed we're fairly sure. He is clearly enfeebled and debilitated by powerful paranoia fueling such self-destructive and extreme delusions. Which is he? Is he a victim or a psychopath? Both? Greene's stunned, piercing eyes bespeak endless lifetimes of agony. He could go either way at any moment, he lets us know in close to every scene in a mere handful of words in all. He is gravely, distressingly, convincing as someone whose true nature we cannot entirely fathom, much less he himself. Greene provides a perfect equilibrium.The result of Clean, Shaven is an atmospherically immersive experience, a story constructed entirely out of mood. What's even more disorienting is that to name the mood is very difficult. It is shot on grainy, desolate film stock in dilapidated towns, lonely roads, cramped bathrooms, germy outmoded kitchens, and low-rent motel rooms. A reliance on dialogue is something that writer-director Lodge Kerrigan actively avoids, as well as most traces of backstory or explanation. In fact, I'm actively avoiding using the term "schizophrenia" in any of my description because, although most descriptions of this movie do, the movie doesn't seem to directly mention it. It's just felt so deeply that we, again, are meant to presume that it is.Presumption, ironically, seems to be Peter's antagonist, outside of his intensely off-putting behavior. Based on something that we presume he does off-camera early in the film, a detective begins to track him and grows desperate to catch him. But he has no evidence. There is nothing for him, or for us, to go on to be certain of what we gather. But, like us, he finds himself, unexplainably, determined to grasp him. One could say that this detective---who barely if ever speaks, definitely even less than Peter who has maybe ten lines in all---is relatively closer to us, more comfortable, part of the outside world, but then one would presume wrong. This guy has a couple of screws loose; he just keeps a tight lid on it. But that tight lid turns all that suppression, whatever it's of, into aggression, which shoots first and asks questions later in sex and in violence. Actually we can only presume about him asking questions. But at that, that mood, which we might deem insanity itself, is everywhere apparent. The film ends on a deeply haunting note where that insanity seems to transmit, or infect. There is no outside world. In the world of Clean, Shaven, we all have screws loose.The 1990s was a decade notable for the alleged renewal of American independent cinema. It was when an emerging generation of new filmmakers decided to go to the edge and try to break new ground. Many did in their own ways, and the ones who have become the most tremendously influential and hold the most sway over audiences are the ones whose revisionist endeavors plug directly into the pop culture sensibility of their content. Lodge Kerrigan was quite the opposite. But the content of Clean, Shaven, his 1993 debut film, liberates him to explore certain formal possibilities with the medium that are rarely observed in more mainstream cinema. It's unremittingly comprised of a radical visual, and equally aural, style that challenges both Hollywood's creative and narratological concerns. Enraptured by a protagonist trapped in his own oppressive reality, Kerrigan crafts a film viewing experience that is more interested in provocation than it is in pleasure.I don't seem to have left much of any footprints of a hint of basis to desire seeing this movie. But there is positively a great amount of appeal in any film experience that taps into and draws out your most abstract moods and emotions. We're supposed to feel them all, or know them all, have a relationship with all of our capacity for feelings. And what's more, this is a piece that topples the opinion that movies are not capable of depicting internal life.

It took me a few viewing to get into this movie, and my biggest gripe was that the film left the issue of Peter's involvement in a rather disturbing murder unanswered. *SPOILER! Don't read any further unless you've seen the movie* The little girl is murdered at some point when Peter is staying at the hotel. It shows him lying in bed looking up at the ceiling, abruptly cutting to a shot of an unseen assailant beating the girl to death. This seems to imply Peter was involved, however right after this there is a scene where Peter hears, outside his hotel room, the sound of people laughing. Since it is established that Peter constantly hears strange noises, you don't know if this is real or not.Prior to all this is a scene where an older woman (mother or sister) is cross with the girl, threatening to hurt her. Later, when McNally is questioning the maintenance guy over the phone, the guy is not the least bit disturbed he found the battered body of a child, but rather complains to McNally that she smelled so bad he couldn't continue working. In the last few minutes, McNally is seen on the phone saying "Inconclusive?". I took from this part he was talking to his department and they were telling him there was not enough evidence to connect Peter with the murder, thus his findings were inconclusive. In the next scene, McNally is back in the bar, and sitting nearby is a man and woman. The woman is upset, crying, and the man tells her she's like a broken record. I think these two are the angry woman and maintenance guy from the hotel, and that they were the killers, since earlier in the film it was established neither have any real regard for the dead girl. It is a quick shot, almost a throwaway, but look for it the next time you watch the film. Peter's possible guilt as a child killer / abuser is also implied when he beats the girl in the city for accidentally bumping his car. The beating is never seen, only heard, and right after Peter drives away from this there are people on the sidewalk who don't act like they've just seen a man beat up a small girl. This leads me to think this whole incident was in Peter's mind. Anyway, just my two cents. Thanks for reading. Hope I'm not just repeating stuff Lodge Kerrigan says in the commentary, I've not yet seen the DVD. Scott

CLEAN, SHAVEN is a dark film detailing the experiences of a paranoid man trying to get custody of his daughter.Peter has recently been released from a mental hospital, and it's pretty obvious early on that he's still not all-there. He tries to function in surroundings that are scary and alien to him, and it is not an easy situation. He wants to be the person/father that he should be, but his mental limitations make that impossible.CLEAN, SHAVEN is a pretty somber experience and isn't recommended for the casual film viewer. I personally didn't find the film to be quite as controversial and "shocking" as many did, but it is a pretty depressing film. One scene in particular may find most in the audience squirming...recommended for those who enjoy subversive/depressing cinema. 8/10

Forget "A Beautiful Mind". This film has a true and simple soul. "Clean, Shaven" is a powerful and insightful look into the world of the paranoid. That it is a low budget "indie" only adds to it's effect. Hollyweird has lost it's ability to produce quality films like this one. It is an "Ox Bow Incident" for the schizophrenics of the world. From the sound effects to Peter Greene's seamless performance, this film never ceases to amaze me. That people stop watching after the first five minutes only proves the point the film is trying to make. He acts "weird" so he must be a deranged killer or a predatory pedophile. It's an indictment of the ever present "Burn them at the stake" mentality. Two thumbs up ...