Tyrannosaur

Saw Tyrannosaur, a miserable film. It opens with Joseph, a drunk, kicking his dog to death. From there he makes a racist joke at an indian dude before casually lobbing a brick through a store-front window. Just another day in the eternal hellscape that is misery-porn indie cinema. All of the husbands are beating their wives, all of the parents are cruel to their children, all of the cops are away on vacation, and all of the dogs are vicious and die. This film is a redemption picture. It starts off with things so bleak that they cannot hope to get better and then, by the end, somehow they kind-of-almost-sort-of do.

So redemption comes in the weak-chinned form of a vaguely religious and vaguely pretty woman who runs a thrift shop that Joseph hides inside of in order to cry for a while. She is to be his saving grace. She has troubles of her own, of course, in the form of alcohol and abuse. At one point Joseph visits a dying friend who, after wheezing for a bit, obliquely reveals that he had abused his daughter. Enough, at some point, is surely enough.

The miserable, miserable bleakness of it makes it almost hilarious. Every time, every single time someone is at all happy it ends in complete disaster. At one point Joseph knocks down a shed and from then on he often sits like a king, in an armchair, in the ruin of his building. Just a miserable sack of a film.

Clearly, it got to me. So it definitely provokes an emotional reaction but for me that reaction is heavily cut with frustration. The situations it depicts is realistic and believable and is frankly playing out right now. Joseph starts out as a man who uses rage to escape from the crushing misery of his life. He directs his self-loathing outward to prevent it from devouring him, little realising or caring that this only allows it fresh air and exercise. When he meets with mother-Mary woman, he is suspicious of her trust, sure that it will turn sour with sufficient poisoning. He's correct of course, but so begins his slow creep towards normalcy. The film has characters and has a plot, I just wish it weren't so hysterically grim. It's like if Gran Torino had been written by a high school student. Why have a man who is merely sad when a borderline suicidal depression is much more shocking?

So this is a film I wish I'd skipped. The suffering herein at least has meaning and is transformative, but ugh what a pain. Just re-read the Book of Job, you'll get all of the important bits.