TWELVE AND HOLDING
US, 2005, 95 minutes, Colour.
Conor Donovan, Jessie Camarcho, Zoe Weizenbaum, Linus Roach, Annabella Sciorra, Jeremy Renner, Jayne Atkinson, Bruce Altman.
Directed by Michael Cuesta.
A few years ago, director Michael Cuesta made a small budget film about teenagers wandering the Long Island Expressway, hence the film’s title, L.I.E. It focused also on a businessman who exploited young boys. The film was both disturbing and insightful.
It is the same with this film, although it does seem more melodramatic than might be expected, dealing as it does with the emotional problems of three twelve year olds. However, it is worth seeing and thinking about no matter how surprising, or even shocking, the behaviour is.
The other main aspect of the film is the role of parents, especially their preoccupation with their own problems which prevents them seeing what their children are going through let alone give them enough strength to step in and be true parents for their children.
When a young boy is killed in a treehouse fire, set alight by two older boys who did not intend the disastrous outcome, his twin brother’s life is changed. The younger of the twins, he has a large birthmark on his face, feels that his parents have ignored him in favour of his brother. In their grief, and in the mother’s vindictive outbursts for vengeance against the boys who killed her son, they offer no support for their surviving son and his grief and confuse him in terms of what must be done for justice. While he goes to visit one of the boys in the detention centre and begins to understand, it is his mother who has the stronger influence on him.
In the meantime, he has an obese school friend (from a continually heartily eating family, junk-food style) who was in the treehouse but survived. This boy is given the chance to care for his weight and the possibility of playing football. His family cannot understand him and, desperately, almost disastrously, he tries to take his mother in hand and help her to face her obese condition.
More serious is the story of a very precocious twelve year old girl, whose father has walked out and broken contact, whose psychiatrist mother is so angry with her husband that she is not aware of the changes in her daughter – which leads to her getting a crush on one of her mother’s clients and moving to stalking and completely inappropriate behaviour.
The film is well acted. We realise that these scenarios are more than possible. We are asked to be emotionally and intellectually challenged by these stories.
1. The portrait of young people, their parents? Insight into children and adults?
2. Ordinary suburbia, the homes and the US flags, the celebration of the Fourth of July, the streets, workplaces, middle-class suburbs, schools? The surrounding woods? Audiences identifying with the characters and situations? The musical score, the songs?
3. Audience expectations, the world of twelve-year-olds, their mentalities? How accurately portrayed? The children and their age, experience and lack of experience, difficulties, death, grief, anger, vengeance?
4. The introduction to the three families: the parents with the twins, the celebrations, the birthday, the gifts? The mother and daughter – and the tensions, the absent father? The fat family, their eating? The boys who threw the fire bomb – and the absence of parents?
5. The sketch of the twins, the bonds between them, Jacob and his mask, Rudi and his toughness, the introverted and the extroverted twins? Rudi and his continued macho challenge to Jacob? The tree-house, throwing the urine on the two boys? Leonard and Malee and their friendship, the Fourth of July? The seemingly idyllic friendships?
6. The parents, their relationship with each other, the twins, the gifts for the birthday? The tree-house? The boys and their threats to Rudi? The evening, Jacob refusing to go, Rudi and Leonard going, vigil in the firehouse, the two boys, throwing the petrol bombs, the fire and Leonard falling, Rudi’s death?
7. The funeral, the reception afterwards, the father quiet and reflective, grieving, the mother and her more extroverted grief, the husband disturbed? The father and the issue of the land, his friend at the funeral, the father not wanting to see the woods again? Jacob and his puzzle at the funeral? The meals, the tension in the family, the wife and her upbraiding her husband after the court hearing, one year’s detention? Her anger, denouncing justice, denouncing her husband? He sitting and quietly inadequate? Their both unable to help Jacob at all? Later, the reconciliation? The issue of adoption? The father and his talk with Jacob, hugging him? The mother and Jacob’s outburst, her declaration of love – but her continually harking back to justice? The ultimate effect on Jacob?
8. Jacob in himself, the comparisons with Rudi, feeling that Rudi was favoured? His self-consciousness about his birthmark? The friendship with Leonard and Malee? Going to the building site? Malee giving him the gun and his hiding it? Going to class, the teacher not knowing Rudi was dead, her embarrassment? His relationship with his parents, their anger, the taunts? The repetition that the death was an accident and their not believing it? The discussions with his friends, their challenge to him, his going to visit Kenny in the detention centre? His reactions, the continued visits, the building of a possible friendship, understanding? The issue of parole, his being shocked, his saying it was an accident? The retrospect of his cunning, the plan to run away, the arrival of the adopted brother, his shock, the fact that the boy was black, not wanting him to touch his possessions – and finally giving him the baseball glove? Going out at night, meeting with Kenny, confronting him, shooting him, burying him? The building site and the body covered? Jacob quiet – his secret? Future?
9. The contrast with Leonard, large, the large family, at school, the coach getting him to do pull-ups, offering him a place in the football team, getting him to run, saying he was the worst-conditioned child he had seen? The Fourth of July, his decision to go with Rudi to the tree-house, falling asleep, falling out of the house and surviving, losing his sense of taste and his parents’ reaction, disbelief? Eating the apple? His beginning to run, the effect, the effort and the collage of his running? The portrait of his parents, the other members of the family, the continued eating, the junk food? The anger in the family? The big family meal, Leonard and his taunts, eating the apple? His father and his anger, taking his sisters to Florida, Leonard at home, enticing his mother to the cellar, boarding it up, saying it was for her own good, leaving the apples, his mistaking the gas, his going unconscious, his mother, her anger, grief, desperate and the apples, smelling the gas, bashing the door down, hospital, his being sorry, the decision not to tell their father?
10. Malee, her age, her birthday, menstruation, the relationship with her mother? Talking to Leonard about menstruation – and her comment about being able to bear a child? Outspoken? Her ethnic background, the absent father, her mother and her angers with her husband, her work, her clients? Malee hanging out with the two boys, the Fourth of July, her grief at the funeral, in the waiting room with a veil, the encounter with Gus, attracted to him, eavesdropping on the interviews, learning about his music? Volunteering to play for the concert, her changing her song to include Gus’s song? Inviting him, his being present, his reaction? Her mother absent? Going to the building site, attracted by Gus, bringing the picnics, talking? Going into his house in secret, watching him in the shower, his grief, almost touching him? Taking his gun, getting Jacob to hide it? Her loneliness, going to Gus’s house, cleaning it up, the sexual advance, the precocious twelve-year-old? Gus and his reaction, ringing her mother, her mother coming in the car, now knowing what to say? Their talk, at home, Malee’s desperate need to see her father, his refusing to talk on the phone? The ultimate resolution and her mother driving her to see her father?
11. The portrait of the mother, hurt and angry, busy with her clients, her counselling of Gus, the shock of finding Malee in his house, the arguments, the decision for the visit? Gus and his advice – and a touch of therapy for her?
12. Gus, the background of his being a fireman, in the waiting room, therapy, Malee seeing him at the site, his work, his trying to get over his trauma after the fires? His secrets? The interviews, the talk about his song, his dreams, going to the concert, his weeping in the shower? The experience with Malee, the advance, ringing her mother, the therapy and its effect for him, his story about killing the burnt child, on her request, the same look in Malee’s eyes? His advice to Malee’s mother?
13. A glimpse of characters, heightened – with a touch of melodrama? The children, age twelve, their burdens? The alert to parents?
