Clean, Shaven (1993) User Reviews

Scary... Sad... Moving...

[The_Core · 7/10 · 19 May 2000]

A scary, sad and terribly depressing movie. All of the performances are extremely true-to-life. The only thing I felt hurt this movie was the pacing, which was irregular at certain points. The camera work was very unusual.

If you've ever wanted a glimpse inside the head of a schizophrenic (which I doubt), this is the film. This movie dares to deal with subject matter that Hollywood would normally never touch. It is not an entertaining film and is extremely difficult to watch, but everything that happened in the movie could easily happen in "real life." There is nothing phony here, nothing pretensive, just an incredibly realistic portrayal of the pain of everyday life, and especially the pain of one young schizophrenic man.

I gave this movie 7/10 for its pacing and somewhat weak plot, yet in a sense it deserves a much higher rating. I gave it 7/10 because I didn't enjoy it... yet it was difficult to tear my eyes away at times. The last 30 minutes of the film are the best... the pacing improves, and the story is at last resolved. I breathed a sigh of relief when this movie ended. This kind of gritty realism is just too hard to watch, but its uncompromising honesty is worthy of a great deal of credit. Painful and difficult to watch, but if you like a film that is utterly honest and doesn't play with your emotions, I recommend you see it. Not for the faint of heart, though.

Bleak Film About Paranoia...

[EVOL666 · 8/10 · 22 October 2005]

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

A Serious Attempt at Filming Schizophrenia

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 2 December 2015]

Peter Winter is a young schizophrenic who is desperately trying to get his daughter back from her adoptive family. He attempts to function in a world that, for him, is filled with strange voices, electrical noise, disconcerting images, and jarringly sudden emotional shifts.

I do not believe this is a very well-known film. I say this because despite it being released by the prestigious Criterion Collection, it was not a title I was familiar with. And I like to think I know movies. (maybe this is naiveté.) Although this went under the radar, I think it deserves a look by anyone who is interested in mental illness, especially as depicted on film. This is not sappy, or starring Sean Penn, or anything we might expect from Hollywood. this is a serious attempt to show the problems the mentally ill face... and it does not leave room for too much happiness.

This film broke my heart

[tbyrne4 · 10/10 · 18 April 2006]

I have spent a reasonable amount of time around schizophrenics and I can safely say that this is the clearest and most empathetic portrait of that illness I have ever seen. Harmony Korine's "Julien-Donkey Boy" is a brilliant movie and is accurate but it doesn't record the horror and sadness and isolation as well as "Clean Shaven". Korine's film is also much more light-hearted. David Cronenberg's excellent "Spider" is (as all Cronenberg's films are) more about David Cronenberg and his recurring themes (re-birth, degeneration, transformation) than it is about schizophrenia.

BASIC Plot line: Peter Winter is a young schizophrenic recently either released or escpaed from a mental institution. He keeps a shotgun in the trunk of his car and the film hints that he may be behind a series of child murders, although this is left vague. Peter desperately wants to see his daughter. The girl's mother died and Peter's mother put the girl up for adoption, fearing she would turn out to be schizophrenic as well. The bulk of the film is Peter's trek to find his daughter and the police's search for the child killer.

This is an absolutely captivating and brilliant film. It makes superb and beautiful use of sound. The viewer is thrust into the mind of a schizophrenic. We are constantly bombarded with images and sounds that Peter is hearing. A jumbled mass of static squelching, radio dialing, sonic squeals, abrasive voices, airplane wooshes, white noise, etc. Trees fly by. Black and white photos drift past. The film is a mad image collage, constantly shifting and moving. It's a torment. We understand that to live the life of a schizophrenic is to live in hell. Truly.

In the center of the chaos is Peter Greene's beautiful lead performance. Tragically handsome, with bright blue eyes and blonde hair. He looks like the all-American boy. Except for the insane light shining in his eyes.

The final scenes, where Peter finally gets to speak to his daughter, broke my heart. The young girl who plays the daughter has one of the most hauntingly sad faces you'll ever see in a film. When she asks Peter if her mother is really dead, the blank longing in her face will haunt me forever.

The last image of the film will always stay with me. It sweeps away any vestiges of creepiness the story accumulates and forces you to realize that schizophrenics are human beings as well. Simply because someone has a mental disorder does not mean that they are not human. The last image shows Peter's daughter trying desperately to reach out to him, because their time together was so precious but so short.

This film absolutely broke my heart. Extraordinarily sad.

astoundingly well made beautiful film

[ro6ot · 5 February 2004]

sorry, this isn't a Hollywood movie about schizophrenia, its not a killer/thriller, its not a gross~out picture, and its not boring. Not being schizophrenic myself i can't attest to the strict accuracy of the impression one is left with. All I can say for sure is that this is without question one of the most strangely beautiful, compassionate, powerful pieces of art i have ever seen.

The story is ultimately incredibly frustrating and deeply tragic, much like the life of its protagonist; poignant and scary start to finish. the cinematography captures the absurd beauty of the natural world and juxtaposes it with the terrifying strangeness of feeling utterly disconnected therefrom. Peter suffers from random auditory hallucinations, so we do to. He is deeply paranoid and almost utterly lost in the world; its clear someone is out to get him, and we are never sure whether he actually hurt anyone or not.

If you want to be spoon~fed something you've already experienced many times before, this isn't the movie for you. But if you appreciate being challenged, forced even, to see the world through a very different lens, you should really see this movie if you haven't already.

To be honest with you...

[Heislegend · 6/10 · 4 July 2009]

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this movie. I'll confess one this right away: I am not particularly a fan of art-house type films. They often don't have much of a point to them and you're left trying to figure out pretty much everything that's going on and what it all means. In a way it's liberating because it allows you to draw your own conclusions and not be bound by a cut and dry story. In another way it's somewhat annoying because it lacks almost anything resembling structure.

The film itself sort of slogs along at it's own steady pace full of jarring moments and a soundtrack designed to put you that much more into the mind of a schizophrenic. That effect works very well...I imagine the mind of a schizophrenic is equally disjointed and maddening. If you can picture a film full of what sounds like a radio stuck between stations and random voices and you'll start to get the idea. I will say that I'm not entirely sure why everyone thinks Peter Greene's performance is so ground breaking. Sure, he was good in the film, but what does it really take to play a schizophrenic? Act twitchy and look confused a lot. I'm sure it's not quite THAT simple but Greene's performance, though good, wasn't anything that blew me away. To be honest nobody in the film absolutely floored me, but it is a very interesting glimpse into the life of a very troubled and disturbed man.

I consider myself a fairly average movie fan. I like movies that allow you to turn your brain off as much as I like movies that have a subtext to them and make you think. But I'll be the first to admit that if there is a real point to this film, I'm the wrong guy to ask as to what it is. It's almost like a real life case study of one man who has serious problems. In a weird way it's nice to see such a realistic portrayal of such a mental illness instead of seeing it dressed up and romanticized like in...say...A Beautiful Mind. All in all I'd recommend it but you have to be in the right mood (or at least I do). I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it, but it's nothing if not interesting, especially as a debut film.

Excellent

[ssaffell · 9/10 · 5 August 2004]

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 ...

The Sound and the Fury

[adrian-193 · 7/10 · 11 January 2007]

This is a small indie by Lodge Kerrigan made in 94. Kerrigan's recent film Keane was astonishing (as was Damian Lewis). Like Keane, this film features a genuinely real and captivating performance by an actor playing a schizophrenic. The film's movement is fragmentary, roped together by a soundtrack that reveals the voices we might suppose are echoing within our character's unbound mind. His actions are confusing to him, and make us increasingly reluctant to watch, as watching makes us complicit with what he does, which is bad.

The use of sound in this film practically makes it worth watching in its own right, pun intended. In the critic's video essay that accompanies the Criterion release of this film, which is pitched to grad level film students (and that's not a complaint), Michael Atkinson remarks that the director uses "objective" sound, not "subjective" sound. It's true that the sounds that fill the film's soundtrack are given us from the external world, often through the protagonist's car radio and sometimes simply through the ether. But I'd disagree with Atkinson. I don't think this is just use of objective sound to a parallel the film's fragmented and "subject-less" subject and narrative. Yes, it's a different use of sound, but it's a complication of subjective sound, not a departure from it. After all we hear the soundtrack, and therefore we can't but believe that the subject hears them.

The use of sound here is interesting, I think, because the protagonist is not hearing them but producing them. We're given the sounds as he hears them, but they echo and resound within his schizophrenic mind, as they are the schizophrenic's world. Voices unattributed, perhaps real, perhaps recollected, but certainly not sounds that anchor the schizophrenic to reality. Rather, sounds that divorce him from the world, catching him as abruptly as an unexpected blow to the head. Short, sharp, shocks that knock about and bring into consciousness commands, put-downs, and other forms of verbal punishment that trouble us for their detachment. We don't know who's saying them. Which means we don't know why they are being said, which means (as Atkinson notes), we don't know what to think of them.

Where Atkinson hangs these sounds on a reel of film though, my sense is that they should be hung on memory, which is not a reel of film, is certainly subjective, if not multiply subjective, and is not objective in the slightest for the simple reason that memories can't be. Our schizophrenic protagonist's relation to sound is that he's caught in a compulsive listening, but cannot hear. The coup in Kerrigan's sonic genius, I think, is that in memory is the protagonist's pain, and it's a pain he suffers, often, without making the slightest of sound. But for the one that we hear.

Genuinely disturbing.

[FeverDog · 9/10 · 26 July 2000]

I will never forget this movie - it chills me every time I see it. What I like most about it is that it contains very little dialogue (unlike "Cube") and is not very visually stylish (unlike "Pi"); the buzzes, static, and blurred radio broadcasts allow direct access into the protagonist's schizophrenic mind as he tries to remain somewhat sane while searching for his daughter given up for adoption by his mother. Peter Greene gives a stunning performance. Only a slightly formulaic ending mars this intense work of art; I cannot wait to see what director Lodge Kerrigan does next.

Cursed Trip Into A Dangerous Mind

[Echotraffic · 6/10 · 3 February 2004]

Clean, Shaven opens up like many other movies which have tried to deal with schizophrenia: a lonely character, completely disconnected from the world, struggling with the non-controllable impulses caused by this mental disease. Not very original, I'm afraid, and we are left with the feeling of watching the beginning of a one-shot movie that we already know we'll dislike.

Fortunately, that happens to reflect only the beginning. After about half an hour (yes, somewhat of a long starter), Kerrigan finally tells us that what we are going to witness is not that basic story everyone could read in so-called scientific magazines about schizophrenia. We are going to witness the psychotic mess from an internal perspective. Which turns the movie into one of the most painful experiences one could ever have. It's not really the acting or the direction, but the atmosphere which sparkles through the whole movie. Some closed, dust smelling, suffocating, awe inspiring and degenerated surrounding. Some infinitely violent scenes will bring you to these hidden mental places in which you'd rather die than lay. This is where the exquisite part of this movie remains (for lack of a better word). Whereas Spider or Fight Club depicted much more the external vision of schizophrenia, Clean, Shaven goes directly to the point: how difficult is it to be schizophrenic? You'll see that the movie is very noisy, some really disturbing noises, as if you were going through the same disease. As Funny Games directed by M.Haneke is purported to make you feel what psychopathy is. The result is the same: you'll end up exhausted, nauseated and perplexed. Some will end up fascinated. But you'll end up richer, either way.

Wake me up when it's over.

[BUDDY-19 · 1/10 · 14 September 1998]

The acting is dismal (with the exception of Peter Greene), the story is vague at best, and those 80 minutes of run time seem like 80 hours. A few scenes made only to give some shock value to the film are clearly recognized for doing just that. Stay away from this low-budget stinker.

One of my favorites...

[guzzardmg · 8/10 · 11 July 2003]

I rented this movie a few years ago, and fell in love with it. Peter Greene steps out of his normal "tough, bad guy" Hollywood roles to play a sensitive father handicapped by schizophrenia.He is recently released from a hospital and reuniting with his daughter becomes his main focus.Unfortunately, we soon learn that its hard for him to focus as sweet hope soon turns tragic. All he wants is to be a good father, something his ailment makes him incapable of. I love the way the director visualizes the schizophrenic moments. If you are looking for something off the beaten path I highly recommend it. 10/10stars

Yeuurr

[nxgn_not_not · 7/10 · 17 October 2003]

Shows about mental illness can be moving. Loaded with moral ambiguity Clean, Shaven can open your eyes to what might be. Not a show for the weak. Of the many points of view brought to light none can be seen as mainstream. But that's good. What LHK chooses to show is as interesting as what can only be imagined exists in these twisted lives. Definitely motivates me to head north of Maine - in a car - or maybe a boat. Trees, wires, stark grays - just a little heaven.

An uncomfortable experience that could have been better

[weadasalpoder · 5/10 · 19 September 2018]

A film about a man with mental illness who wants to recover his daughter, this really sounded who could mak me cry, give some big emotions, show the values of family but...no the movie choiced to be remembered for be very umcomfortable.

By a start the story really feels that is only 30 minutes of the entire movie, the main character does what he has to do to recover his daughter and let's just say with a poor method, I am not gonna spoil I'll just leave it there and the rest of the movie is just watch him deal with his mental illness through weird and some gory sequences that do not contribute to the development of something in anyway they just exist for he sake of be weird.

The writer could have shown some plotholes who are left through the entire movie, I mean they do explain some stuff but just thinking a bit logically from what we have in the summary here, why does a woman had a child with a person who obviously lacks his mental faculties? Did a mental institution really just let go this kind of man just like that without anyone to watch over him? They could explain that he ran away or something but they decided to spend time in uncomfortable scenes after all the main character has mental illness so the lack of progress is justified.

Indeed they are right Peter really just suffers through almost all the movie with his problems and they make sure to make some of them shocking enough, also he does not talk a lot something vital when he want to get some information about his daughter so the plot has to move some way to make him find her, I won't tell how it does it but once he make it try to think how did he got there and you'll see a problem.

Sounds like I didn't like the movie just because the mental illness but no! I have to say they really knew how to capture it and not only just see it but feel really in the case of sounds, we practically hear in some scenes what Peter hears in order to understand his situation better sad it only works as something decorative.

5.8/10 A story that needed more story development and less "let's be weird for the sake of it" factor.

Ranks with "Spider" as two best portrayals of schizophrenia

[thecineman · 28 June 2004]

Peter Winter (Peter Greene) is a tormented schizophrenic man who is let out of a hospital despite suffering from extreme symptoms of nearly continuous auditory hallucinations, paranoia, and a highly fragmented, discontinuous sense of reality. His one steady goal is to find his young daughter, Nicole (Jennifer MacDonald), who has begun a new life as an adoptee, following the murder of her mother. Peter first visits his own mother, a taciturn, emotionally withholding woman who is not at all pleased to see him. Later he discovers his daughter's whereabouts, when her adoptive mother brings Nicole to visit her grandmother (who is as chilly toward Nicole as she is toward Peter). Meanwhile, a police detective (Robert Albert), searching for a serial child killer, has concluded that Peter is his man. A fateful ending is set up when the detective encounters Peter with Nicole at an isolated beach.

There are serious flaws in this film: the screenplay is not well wrought and is too full of ambiguities, especially the entire serial child killing subplot. This is highly distracting. The acting is second rate, except for Greene's and MacDonald's performances. The film's strength lies in Kerrigan's insightful deployment of sound, setting and other effects to create the clinical realism of Peter's schizophrenic experience. Peter's intense, perpetual fear is palpable. Much of the film is shot in his car, where he has placed masking tape over the mirror, and newspaper over several windows, to fortify his privacy. The effect is an impacted atmosphere of paranoid insulation. Peter's hallucinated auditory experience – garbled voices, static and other noise, unaccompanied by any visual representations – is clinically valid. The voices and noise haunt him steadily. He tells Nicole he has had a radio device implanted in his head, with a transmitter in a fingernail. Earlier we had been exposed to his violent efforts to rid himself of these devices using scissors or a knife to gouge them out – forms of delusion-driven self-mutilation that are uncommon but not rare in persons suffering the throes of severe acute psychotic episodes. The use of tight close up camera angles - viewing Peter from just behind his back or in profile in his car - heighten the sense of claustrophobia, the extreme narrowing of Peter's psychotic world. The setting - Miscou Island, in New Brunswick – adds further accents of wildness and isolation to the overall tone of the film.

It can be argued that the detective's pursuit of Peter adds yet another source of paranoid fever to the film, though for me this conceit does not ring true. The fact that someone really is after Peter detracts from the power of his delusions. Other than this, Kerrigan can be congratulated for steering clear of the false visuals (realistically visualized imaginary friends and enemies) and other clinically implausible effects that Ron Howard used more recently in A Beautiful Mind. Anyone – professional or lay viewer – might rightly wonder how Peter could be discharged from the hospital in such poor psychiatric condition. Of course that happens every day in most contemporary short stay hospital settings, because involuntary treatment laws in most states prohibit keeping patients against their will except in the most extreme circumstances of immediate potential for violence. But we are given the impression at the start of this film that Peter had been incarcerated in a more traditional mental hospital, the sort in which people stay for long periods before discharge, until they appear relatively free of symptoms, sometimes longer. Of course these large old facilities are typically short staffed, keen clinical observation of patients may be scarce, and patients not uncommonly can muster a façade of normality to win their freedom.

The depiction of Peter's mother is also troublesome. Her grim withholding of affection for Peter and Nicole resurrects the spectra of the 'schizophrenogenic mother' – a psycho dynamic fiction popular the 1950s and 60s that accused parents, especially mothers, of causing schizophrenia through self serving, unaffectionate regard for their children. This myth was laid to rest long ago, and it is a black mark against this film to see such a notion resurrected. It does not dispel the power of this negative maternal portrayal when, from a distance, we see the mother crying as she hangs one of her son's shirts on a clothesline near the end.

Clean, Shaven shares with David Cronenberg's film, Spider, the distinction of offering the most believable portraits of highly symptomatic schizophrenic experience that have been brought to the big screen. I prefer Spider because the acting is uniformly first rate and the screenplay is superior. Both films pull the viewer into an exquisitely painful, odd, lonely, and ultimately unrewarding world, into experiences that many moviegoers would, no doubt, prefer to avoid. Dramatically, this is a "C" movie, but the portrayal of schizophrenia rates an "A."

Incredible

[Boyo-2 · 10/10 · 4 August 1998]

Peter Greene is amazing in this unforgettable movie. Too bad only about 17 people in the world have seen it. It is almost impossible to watch at times, but always fascinating. I will never forget some of the images from this movie for as long as I live. Lodge Kerrigan is a genius, if you ask me.

not as gory as stated but still disturbing

[trashgang · 6/10 · 10 January 2017]

I've read so many positive things about this flick and by running through my Fango's I came across this flick again, so time for hunting it down and watch it.

It was written that it was extreme gory. Can't say I found it a gory flick. There are moments that are maybe a bit gory like removing a fingernail or cutting hair to closely to the skin but for me that was all. That it is disturbing, on that fact I can agree somehow. But overall it failed a bit, my expectations were too high.

If you are into sick flicks about characterisation of a disturbed mind then this is probably your thing but to say it was a horror, not really. Not my cup of tea sadly even as I can dig real sickies.

Gore 0,5/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 3/5 Story 2,5./5 Comedy 0/5

unforgettable!!!

[artist29 · 10/10 · 29 November 2002]

CLEAN, SHAVEN is one the most most powerful movie experiences I have had. The film resonates in a way few pictures have ever dared to. The still camera work, avant garde editing artfully blended with incredible sound mixing and a tour-de-force performance by Peter Greene makes this movie one of the most important independent films in recent history. Lodge Kerrigan has an acute understanding of the power of stillness rarely seen in American film making and Peter Greene gives a performance that will haunt you forever.

If you are interested in film as an art form, watch CLEAN, SHAVEN and enjoy a film maker and actor who have brought the most haunting and unforgettable portrayal of a man struggling with mental illness that you will ever see.

Sound to describe character

[ellkew · 6/10 · 10 June 2002]

I saw this at the ICA in London, and have since never met anyone else who has seen it. It uses sound such as distortion, radio fuzz to describe the interior mind of the Peter Greene's character, a very disturbed schizophrenic. As a result it pushes the film further as you are sucked into the killers mind resulting in a difficult and powerful film to watch. One scene involving fingernails is something I had to look away from as it was simply unbearable to watch. This is not to say the rest of the film is similar but it is a well made portrait of a man on the brink and is an uneasy film. There are few films that depict characters such as this, in as powerful a manner. Most usually rely on graphic depictions of blood,this is far superior.

An Atmospherically Submerging Ride

[jzappa · 10/10 · 31 May 2010]

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.

???different???

[mondricus · 7/10 · 5 February 2015]

i had to watch this for school picked it from the Criterion Collection. i only picked it because it was a newer film. enjoyed it a lot but i wouldn't have wanted to see it just off the trailer. it was like nothing I've seen before, i mean as an adult movie goer. mostly because its an old school drama, something i would have never seen as a kid. i love that there isn't a ton of dialogue to many films rely to much on this. it leaves something to the imagination films today just give you everything with a small twist which is a let down. that is if you don't see is coming. i would recommend if you really want to see something different from today's gibberish.

Lodge Proves His Worthlessness Again

[mcjensen-05924 · 2/10 · 5 September 2021]

In true Kerrigan form, he continues to get the lowest, worst, most dull performances out of all cast members. I've almost come to believe he doesn't want them displaying any genuine feeling or emotion, because none of them do. When this movie first came out I watched it and thought it was all right if not riddled with plot holes and average acting. Well today the plot holes of course are still there, but the movie was so scatterbrained you don't really miss the information gaps so much. But the acting oh my gosh how can people hand in such flatline performances and still continue to get work? The attempts at creating atmosphere were effective at a few points but usually I was just thinking okay that's more than enough for this scene let's move on please. You'll recognize a big name actor here who isn't credited, which tells me he wanted to be completely disassociated with this steaming mess. After seeing his performance I don't blame him. Very poor character development, by which I mean none. Fill in the gaps yourself. The daughter was bland as paste as was her mother and lead character's mother too. At least the young mother was pretty. A lot of unnecessary scenes which I didn't really understand the need for. The words used to describe Lodge such as brilliant and artistic are far from accurate in my view. Having characters act in uniformly strange and unbelieveable ways in not artistic it's just poor film making. Claire Dolan was similarly distressing, and that other movie about a dumb drunk looking for his daughter. Keane, I think. Completely forgettable efforts that were even harder to sit through than this. Maybe watching it again would clear up any lingering questions I have but I don't think I have it in me to endure it again. It's just not that important to me....

Schizoprenic roller-coaster ride.

[Boba_Fett1138 · 8/10 · 6 November 2009]

This movie sucks you right into the mind of a schizophrenic person and takes you on a roller-coaster ride, that for hims is called his average normal life.

"Clean, Shaven" is a low budget movie but also one with the qualities of a big picture. Had the movie been one that was directed by a better known person and had starred a big name as the main lead but had been in its quality exactly the same, the movie would had been of course a far better known and also way more appreciated one.

It's a movie that deserves some more recognition, fore "Clean, Shaven" is simply a movie that got done very well. The movie does a great job at telling the story mostly from the schizophrenic point of view and you experience basically what his experiencing. This movie is probably as close as you will get at experiencing what it is to be schizophrenic, unless you really have schizophrenia yourself of course.

The movie also has a main plot line but in all honesty that just didn't always seemed important and relevant to me. For me the movie could had basically been about everything and would had been just as good. "Clean, Shaven" is simply just a movie that is all about the experience and you are being sucked right into it from the start.

The movie only stars some unknown small time actors but you really have to give Peter Greene all the credit for doing such an awesome job with his character. Perhaps is performance is also 'thanks' to the heroic addiction he suffered years from.

A great, powerful and effective movie experience!

8/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

a script not worth filming

[sensibleman · 3/10 · 17 August 2008]

I don't think this movie tried to tell a story and gave a message to audiences. It just focuses on a story of a men in a short period of time and movie is far far away from telling us whats really going on. So i think maybe it doesn't tell anything to us, because there is nothing interesting to tell and it is not worth telling. So maybe director choose to tell nothing., because he knows that if he try to tell the story with details, it is only going to be worser. And because it is not a pop corn movie or it is not a movie you can watch without taking a breath till the end, it only wastes your time and gives nothing at the end. You can get bored especially when movie is close to end. Two things i like about this movie are the main actor of the movie and the beginning of the movie. I don't advice you to watch this movie. Especially if you aren't a huge movie lover.

Short, sharp and edgy

[bob the moo · 20 February 2002]

Peter Winter is travelling across an US state to find his daughter who was put up for adoption following his wife's murder. He suffers from some form of paranoid schizophrenia and is gaunt and haunted looking. Meanwhile a detective is following a trail of murders and believes that the trail leads to Winter.

This is a very edgy little film. I didn't know what it was about when I watched it - I don't know I would have watched it if someone had described it to me. The story unfolds with very little dialogue and doesn't exactly have a plot to speak of. Instead the film puts us in the head of Winter and also comments on society's view of these people.

The audio track is the most disturbing part - full of electrical crackles over strong dialogue (from his life? From movies? We don't know). Most likely these are his `voices'. We also see things through his jumpy eyes are have visions like he does. The most disturbing part is where he removes his own nail to get the transmitter `they' put there. The relentless pursuit of the detective represents our mistrust of these people and the ending makes a clear judgement on his (our) actions. The final shot is a fine summing up of a child's innocence.

Greene (best known for Usual Suspects or Zed in Pulp Fiction) is really good in a role that a big star would have hammed up. He looks totally believable in the lead. Robert Albert is good as the sheriff and mixes his character's morality really well. The film is not a fun time to be had by all! It's plot is weak and the lack of dialogue, weird happenings and lack of explanation may frustrate some. However it is only 80 minutes long so it never drags, it captivates by being so very different and it is very thought provoking.

Overall it's worth a watch - it is edgy and interesting, not the most fun you'll ever have, but then it isn't meant to be.