Really Rare, Really Powerful, Really Necessary, and Really Amazing Movie
I may be getting out of line, here, but there's a point in most male adolescent development for the search for sex takes on an overly aggressive, practically sadistic aspect that is for the most part entirely contrary and disturbing, so that it's hardly often mentioned except as one of those "confused thoughts" that teen men get. This time of life is usually quickly passed; barely anybody acts on those impulses because its too seedy and antisocial, most boys outgrow it, and the majority of them end up having other, more positive formative experiences that allows them to leave that part of themselves behind. Nevertheless, the obsessive quality of male sexual development is not all that often given its own movie, as the results are as disturbing as this one. Jerzy Skolimowski writes and directs a movie about a 15 year old boy who, having been thrust into the work place and a world of underlying sex and violence he doesn't comprehend, loses all sense of social normative awareness and quite literally goes off the deep end.
Mike (John Moulder-Brown) is out of school and gets his first job. He's immediately smitten by the ten-year-older Susan (Jane Asher) who, unfortunately for Mike, is a confused aged-beyond-her-years tease and man-user who has no real way of interpreting the world around her except by sleeping and flirting with other men for her gain: her fiancé because he's rich, even if he is a tool and ridiculously clueless; her ex-swim coach because he's older and has given her a job; and now Mike because of his persistence and insistence in getting her attention and approval.
With no other life to distract him, no money to support him, nothing but his low-class existence and his desire for Susan, Mike quickly goes from a crush to confused love to stalking to outright obsession, with absolutely no awareness of the negative effect of his actions. This all, keep in mind, is set in 70s England, where law enforcement is ridiculously incompetent, sexual taboos have gone past being broken to being downright dysfunctional, and social confusion and decay has set permanently into the mold of the city. Everything is seedy, dirty, and disturbingly sexualized. Movie theatres offer ridiculous porn, clubs that couples go to are adult clubs, and the lower classes essentially wander the streets looking for things to blow their load on (monetarily and otherwise). British cinema is typically soaked in class consciousness, and Jerzy shows his affinity for that awareness even if he's not British himself.
This movie is a masterpiece. The cinematography is beautiful, with some of the most profound changes in the story saturated in red, a lot of shifting light values, and camera movements that get the viewer stuck into the head of little Mike, especially in one superb set-up in the veranda of an adult club, a moment as profound, unbalanced, and nauseating as the movie eventually becomes as a whole. The acting is beyond superb, and led by a script that manages to make some of the most dreadful people into relatable, tear-inducing tragic characters. Mike is driven to symbolically (and maybe even "literally" works too) submerge himself into Asher's body (not that a blame him) and the psychosexual tumble into morbid insanity (that's where I do blame him for his actions) is even more compelling than even films like Vertigo. Music by Cat Stevens and The Can gives a suspenseful backdrop, and the mise-en-scene is laced with the pessimism felt subconsciously in the 70s.
Deep End is one of those movies of which I can understand completely why it's hard to come by: it strikes a little too closely to the most unmentioned, unacknowledged aspect of male fantasy, and it doesn't relieve any of it with comedy or a happy ending, preferring instead to close on a strikingly symbolic final shot with absolutely no credits to follow (read: no time to sit and collect one's self after viewing--in keeping with the Hitchcock comparison, think The Birds, only more realistic and damning). That said, it's honestly one of the best movies I've ever seen and should be much more well-known and appreciated, in my opinion. The screening I attended was introduced by the owner of the theatre who claimed that we were watching one of the only extant prints in the entire United States. I've seen quite a lot of rare and underground cinema over the past couple of years, but the knowledge of this movie's marginalization truly hits me in the heart. Hopefully it will keep passing on from theatre to theatre until somebody with a lot of disposable income and a little interest decides to give it a treatment to open it up to a larger audience. Maybe they weren't ready in the 70s to watch this. I don't think very many people are ready now. But hopefully it'll safely find a bigger audience.
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