Clean, Shaven (DVD)

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Whatever its limitations, Lodge Kerrigan´s "Clean, Shaven" (1993) is certainly a film that jangles the nerves.

The story is simple enough: Peter Winters (Peter Greene, better known as Zed from "Pulp Fiction") has returned home after a long time away, and now he wants to find his daughter Nicole (Jennifer MacDonald) who was placed for adoption while he was gone. Complicating this straightforward scenario is the fact that Peter was absent because he was being treated for schizophrenia. The treatment doesn´t appear to have helped, which makes you wonder why he was released in the first place; perhaps he escaped.

Kerrigan plunges the viewer deeply into Peter´s fracture psyche, staging a full-blown audiovisual assault intended to show the world from Peter´s tormented perspective. The effect is unsettling, to say the least. Visually, Kerrigan shows a world of fragments and uncomfortable close-ups. Instead of a complete face, we only see a person´s mouth; when Peter makes a sandwich, we see a tomato up close, being sliced to bits, its juicy pulp oozing out in all directions. There is no comfort zone provided, no personal space. For Peter, the world is an indecipherable code of isolated images, a data stream that overwhelms his senses, never giving him a chance to fit the pieces into place.

As visually jagged as the film is, the soundtrack is even more disorienting. Schizophrenics often experience audio hallucinations; in the film, they are represented as a car radio that seems perpetually stuck on "Scan," long stretches of squawking static, punctuated by angry outburst from stations only half-received. And if that´s not jarring enough, the soundtrack often has no obvious relation to the image track, providing no clear interpretation for what we see or hear. Are these sounds Peter´s garbled memories, or just the endless feedback constantly filling his head?

Peter attributes the noises to transmitters planted in his head and in his finger, leading to two of the film´s most cringe-inducing scenes when he tries to remove the implants. The scene in which he rips off his fingernail made quite an impression when the film was released in 1995, and quickly became a staple for all film school brats at the time (as I well remember.)

While Peter´s incessant paranoia stems from an organic disease, the film suggests that it is not entirely unjustified. Detective Jack McNally (Robert Albert) stalks Peter, suspecting him in the murder of a little girl. Kerrigan doesn´t provide any answers on this front: Peter may or may not have done it. We certainly believe he could have done it, and still not even be aware of it. For his part, all Peter wants to do is find Nicole, something both his mother and Nicole´s foster mother want to prevent. He eventually finds her, and the voices in his head go quiet, if only for a brief idyll.

"Clean, Shaven" was shot over the course of two years on a shoe-string budget (approx. $60,000) and it is a triumph of post production. Student filmmakers can consider this an object lesson in the critical importance of the sound design. With a more traditional, less expressive soundtrack, the movie would be just another indie formula pic about a troubled loner seeking a connection with the world. Instead, this discordant, angry sound collage transforms the film into a unique and unsettling viewing (listening) experience.

As impressive as this accomplishment is, the film still feels a bit like a gimmick, which is not necessarily a bad thing to be (think "Memento" or even "Reservoir Dogs"). Still, Kerrigan wisely brings the film in at just 79 minutes (budget constraints might have helped him make such a "wise" decision), and even at that length it feels a bit stretched. It´s also such a grueling film that most viewers would probably find it challenging to endure two hours of life as filtered through Peter´s senses. I´ve always thought 70-80 minutes was a wonderful length for a film: no frills, no indulgences, just get in and get the job done. Such films were commonplace in the 60s and 70s, but are very rare today. What a shame.