PARK CITY, Utah -- Inertia, ennui, abuse, disorientation, discrimination. Of all these featured subjects at the Sundance Film Festival, none passeth in sheer excruciating power than that of paranoid schizophrenia. The toughest sit of the dramatic competition, ''Clean, Shaven'' is also one of the most expertly made, a corrosively chilling depiction of the ravages of dementia.
A cacophony of intrusively threatening images and discordantly noisy abrasions, ''Clean, Shaven'' documents the downslide of Peter Winter (Peter Greene), an intelligent young man who desperately seeks to find his young daughter (Jennifer MacDonald) in a small, coastal fishing town. His quest is ruptured by recurring delusions of persecution -- he thinks he has a transistor implanted in his brain.
Living in his junk-strewn car, Peter batters himself with increasingly masochistic behavior: He knifes apart a fingernail, lifting it from the skin to get at his implanted circuitry, and burrows into his skull with a knife to wedge out the gadgetry.
His menace to others is no less. Publicly frightening, his eerie, self-destructive behavior unnerves even those who have minimal contact with him.
Writer-producer-director Lodge Kerrigan's spare narrative is powerfully implosive. Peter's agitation and murderous behavior are cinematically compacted by Kerrigan's forceful fusion of jarring compositions, percussive cuts, numbing sounds and constricted framings. ''Clean, Shaven'' is a film you cannot, as much as you'd like, tear your eyes from. Highest praise to Kerrigan and to his skilled technical team, most prominently editor Jay Rabinowitz and cinematographer Teodoro Maniaci.
The cast members are solid and well-chosen. As the sick and deadly lead character, Greene brings an icy, desperate fury to his character's downslide, while Megan Owen evinces touchingly the horrible, isolated pain of his shattered mother.
CLEAN, SHAVEN
DSM III Films Inc.
Director/producer/screenwriter Lodge H. Kerrigan
Executive producer J. Dixon Byrge
Director of photography Teodoro Maniaci
Editor Jay Rabinowitz
Production designer Tanie Ferrier
Music Hahn Rowe
Color/stereo
Cast:
Peter Winter Peter Greene
Peter's mother Megan Owen
Nicolle Jennifer MacDonald
Melinda Molly Castelloe
Jack McNally Robert Albert
Running time -- 80 minutes
(c) The Hollywood Reporter...
A cacophony of intrusively threatening images and discordantly noisy abrasions, ''Clean, Shaven'' documents the downslide of Peter Winter (Peter Greene), an intelligent young man who desperately seeks to find his young daughter (Jennifer MacDonald) in a small, coastal fishing town. His quest is ruptured by recurring delusions of persecution -- he thinks he has a transistor implanted in his brain.
Living in his junk-strewn car, Peter batters himself with increasingly masochistic behavior: He knifes apart a fingernail, lifting it from the skin to get at his implanted circuitry, and burrows into his skull with a knife to wedge out the gadgetry.
His menace to others is no less. Publicly frightening, his eerie, self-destructive behavior unnerves even those who have minimal contact with him.
Writer-producer-director Lodge Kerrigan's spare narrative is powerfully implosive. Peter's agitation and murderous behavior are cinematically compacted by Kerrigan's forceful fusion of jarring compositions, percussive cuts, numbing sounds and constricted framings. ''Clean, Shaven'' is a film you cannot, as much as you'd like, tear your eyes from. Highest praise to Kerrigan and to his skilled technical team, most prominently editor Jay Rabinowitz and cinematographer Teodoro Maniaci.
The cast members are solid and well-chosen. As the sick and deadly lead character, Greene brings an icy, desperate fury to his character's downslide, while Megan Owen evinces touchingly the horrible, isolated pain of his shattered mother.
CLEAN, SHAVEN
DSM III Films Inc.
Director/producer/screenwriter Lodge H. Kerrigan
Executive producer J. Dixon Byrge
Director of photography Teodoro Maniaci
Editor Jay Rabinowitz
Production designer Tanie Ferrier
Music Hahn Rowe
Color/stereo
Cast:
Peter Winter Peter Greene
Peter's mother Megan Owen
Nicolle Jennifer MacDonald
Melinda Molly Castelloe
Jack McNally Robert Albert
Running time -- 80 minutes
(c) The Hollywood Reporter...
- 1/28/1994
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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