Independently Forgotten About: Manic (2001)

    (No spoilers)

    I had no idea what this movie was going to be about, or what it was going to be like but I decided to stream it a few months back and I was not disappointed. I say all of that because normally before viewing a movie, I read a bit about it beforehand or have been told a lot about it beforehand so I usually go into a movie knowing kind of what I'm getting into. This was one of those days where I felt like just clicking on random movies and watching them without knowing what they were at all just for the hell of it.

    Starting off, I have to go on to say that I admired the cinematography right off the bat. Doing a bit of iMDB research, the cinematography was done extremely impressively (handheld) by Nicholas Hays, someone who there is not much information about but he has worked on just three other film projects besides Manic including Bob Odenkirk's 2003 off-beat comedy 'Melvin Goes To Dinner'. I mention handheld of course because the camera work by Hays was done with mini DV tape cameras with a budget estimated around 400,000 dollars.

    The small budget independent drama reels in a really phenomenal cast for less than a million dollars. Joseph Gordon Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, Don Cheadle, and Elden Henson. You definitely could not make a movie with the exact same cast today for $400,000. Out of these great performances comes one I for some ungodly reason wasn't too familiar with... the face at least. I had heard the name Michael Bacall but I hadn't ever seen the face behind the name. Bacall was almost thirty years old when he starred alongside Levitt and Deschanel in this film, and not only did he star, he also wrote this movie with filmmaker/actor Blayne Weaver. I have to say his performance was extremely rock solid, and the story for this film is great; I only have just little critique's here and there.

Joseph Gordon Levitt & Michael Bacall (via MovieStillsDB.com)

    The story is about a teenager named Lyle Jensen who beats another player with a bat during a baseball game. Along with some other teenagers, Lyle is admitted to a juvenile psychiatric ward and is roomed with thirteen year old Kenny whom he forms a somewhat brotherly bond with. A lot of the movie takes place at group therapy sessions with Dr. Monroe who is there to simply get them to talk and learn/figure out what's wrong and how to better things. I'm not here to really spoil anything so I'll try my best to not throw the entire story into this blog post, but you get the basic synopsis now of this film.

    For random and unknown unexplained reasons, Elden Henson is extremely obnoxious and a bully; like, much worse than a normal obnoxious bully. He sort of also acts like he's going to become the next famous rapper or something. I do like Elden Henson, so it's a bit unfortunate how supremely douchey his character is written to be and ended up being portrayed, but it is my favorite performance in this entire movie. Michael Bacall definitely hit a home run playing the agoraphobic character 'Chad'; I could see through and through that he knew exactly how this character should be played all planned out in his head and executed it. The role of Chad is (in my eyes) the hardest role to pull off out of every character. His worsening mental state through out the film is almost believable and I'm really not kidding; I genuinely wanted to know if Michael Bacall was going through some shit while this was being made and that's how he accomplished the baggy eyes and perfect dead faced stare, but no, it's just all acting.

    

    Besides a handful of scenes, this movie is severely realistic looking, almost like I'm watching a documentary. And that's not a bad thing, I actually really love that aesthetic obviously. There's a scene where Lyle and Chad smoke and talk about their love of rock and metal music and badass concert experiences before finally going back to the others who are chilling and listening to the soft instrumental music being played. Lyle and Chad take over the stereo and change it to, out of everything, a Deftones song. Nothing wrong with that, but I would have chosen something a little heavier and crazy like a Cannibal Corpse song because they begin to mosh around and that prompts everyone else to mosh as well to the song. This scene was kind of strange and senseless; makes me think that Bacall and Weaver actually think a ward of seriously half-psychotic troubled teens would stomp around to Deftones in a real world setting. It was real up until that point I'd say.

    But of course, that doesn't matter at all. All that matters is that this movie is an incredible gem; amazingly underrated, and should be viewed by a lot more people to be honest. There is surprisingly (or not surprisingly) a lot to learn from this film. Friendship; heartbreak; loyalty; self control; health; and a lot more is here to be questioned and talked about of course. It may still be on Hulu but go buy the DVD or something because it's a good one for the collection.

    -Rhett Rhodes