The United States of Leland

The United States of Leland isn't a whodunit. The opening scenes of Matthew Ryan Hoge's unusual murder mystery make it clear that Leland P. Fitzgerald (The Believer's Ryan Gosling) is the killer. But why did he kill? Now that the deed is done, Leland is staying in a detention center. Everybody, but especially new teacher Pearl Madison (Don Cheadle), wants to know why he killed the mentally challenged brother of girlfriend Becky (Jena Malone). After all, Leland seemed to genuinely like the kid. Leland is just as confused (and can't remember committing the act), but he reveals more and more clues as he gradually opens up to Pearl. His estranged novelist father Albert (Kevin Spacey), meanwhile, just wants to spin another bestseller out of his son's story. Writer-director Hoge doesn't provide any easy answers in this compelling, complicated look at teenage depression. Featuring music by the Fire Theft's Jeremy Enigk. --Kathleen C. Fennessy Amazon.com

The Ethics of Pain

The premise is rather simple. A teenager, awkward, introvert and burdened with a sensibility that sears his heart to numbness, commits an inexplicable murder. An atrocious one at that. The victim is his girlfriend's brother, Bryan, who is an 11 year old severely autistic nonentity. The main role of Leland Fitzgerald is interpreted by Ryan Gosling with such compelling anguish that it magnifies the complexity of a fragile spirit to such a degree we cannot psychologize the troubled youth because we are disoriented as we observe the indomitable suffering Leland attempts to silence. Likewise we are given a stark visual of the two sets of parents, the questions that harrow them and the way the tragedy unravels what seemed to be a world pulling at the seams of every thread.
The emotionally detached Leland retraces his steps thanks to the invasive insistance of his juvenile hall educator Pearl Madison, admirably played by Don Cheadle, who is undergoing moral dilemmas of his own. Pearl's feigned confidence is contrasted with confounding and disarming depth to Leland's innocent aloofness. The emotional texture of the movie is further enriched by strands of a narrative that follows Bryan's other sister who is unsettled and dejected, an 18 year old who is not allowed to search and delve within her own turbulance. She breaks up with her boyfriend, he too a timid soul reaching for a stability that teeters on the brink of injected scrupolousness. If you then add the torpor and emotional sterility that Leland's dad, an accomplished bestselling author whose fame rests on his descriptive novels that indemnify suburbia, you have in focus a portrait of such a philosophical, psychological and ethical intensity undeniably impressive, expressive and teeming with the brute force that sterilizes our lives as it designates its shallow characteristics. Much more may well be added in terms of the narrative, for it deploys innumerable details that trace a perspective that becomes dissolved just when it seems to have become solidified most. The director, Matthew Ryan Hoge, frames the movie in such a way as to mesmerize the viewer through the autopsy of a society that in the wake of a murder discovers how much everything else is dead within. The motion-sickness tremble of the photographic ambiance of these quivering soulscapes, given full force, reaches a climactic burst when things seem to make sense again and our code of ethics reinstated with trust. It is in that precise moment that a second murder makes the depth of the movie's conscience become too vast for imperatives of psychology or social commentary. The movie stirs, moves, and shocks, but best of all it illuminates the pain of lives gone numb and that dorment force that craves reawakening. July 7, 2008

United States of Leland

I could not enjoy this movie because my DVD came scratched, and that is one flaw of DVD's: You cannot advance the movie, if you are stuck on a disc scratch.

All in all, we know what is going on, but we are anxious to see things resolved, I have a feeling I missed a lot of that movie. June 26, 2008

Ryan Gosling is turning out to be a very interesting fellow

Fantastic story rife with sadness, poignancy, and insights. It starts out with you knowing something bad took place and someone's been murdered. I assumed it was going to be some sort of a special case murder and it was. That is how the story begins layering. As you learn who got murdered, who he was attached to, how the murderer fit into the social network of the victim, and gain insights to the murderers background and method of thinking, you become more vested with the film. When the end is reached, with all that you have learned and see the final conclusion, well, it was one of the saddest moments I've ever witnessed. There is a dark beauty to be found within Leland but his perspectives yield tragic results. I was blown away. April 28, 2008

My 2nd Favorite Movie

I bought this off amazon a few months ago. I saw it before I bought it. It's amazing. It's a little bit sad,depressing, and dark but it's a great movie and gives you a different taste than hollywood has to offer. December 5, 2007

Entertaining, but meaning unclear

I'm not sure if this was a great movie or not, but I'll say this for it: it certainly held my interest while I was watching it.

There are a lot of wheels spinning in this story at once. There's Leland, the mild mannered 16 year old boy who is in jail for killing a mentally impaired child, there is his teacher, an aspiring writer who thinks that writing a book about Leland might be his big break, there is his father, a famous novelist who hasn't seen his son in years, there is his former girlfriend, a relapsed drug addict, and her sister, and her sister's boyfriend, who now lives with their family after his own mother died, and as all of these wheels are turning, the question of why such a nice kid like Leland would commit such a horrible crime is slowly answered.

Throw in a cool post-Tarantino esque out of order story line, and then add Don Cheadle (the teacher) and Kevin Spacey (the father), two of the best under-rated actors, and I'd say you've got yourself a film. Whether it means anything when all is said and done is, however, another question.

I should probably give this film another watch and think about it a bit more, but off-hand I'd say the philosophy in this film struck me as shallow and fortune cookie-esque. And I'm not sure all of the events in this film entirely made sense.

Of course I guess the filmmakers would argue that the whole point of the film is that human nature doesn't really make sense. But does this at some point just become an easy out for a plot with loose ends in it?

I guess until I watch the film again and reflect on it further, I'll just leave it at that.
July 4, 2007

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