L.I.E. (20 January 2001)
directed by Michael Cuesta
starring Paul Franklin Dano, Brian Cox, Billy Kay, Bruce Altman, James Costa, Tony Michael Donnelly, Walter Masterson, Marcia DeBonis
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MPAA rating: Studio: Belladonna Productions, Lot 47, New Yorker Films Script: Stephen M. Ryder, Michael Cuesta, Gerald Cuesta Music: Pierre Földes Running time: 97 minutes Tags: coming-of-age; Drama; homosexuality; Long Island; New York; suicide Tactical strength: [8/10]
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for strong sexual content involving teens, language and brief violence
L.I.E. opens with 15-year-old Howie Blitzer (Paul Franklin Dano) balanced precariously on an overpass railing. We hear Howie's narration, "On the Long Island Expressway there are lanes going east, lanes going west, and lanes going straight to hell. The expressway has taken a lot of people," including his mother, "and I hope it doesn't get me." Howie doesn't fit into any of the clicks at school, and his mother's death hasn't helped his social skills. He has started to skip school and rob houses for the thrill. But he also has a tender side that writes poetry and quotes verses of Walt Whitman. Like most teenagers, he wonders about his acceptability to his peers -- especially when dealing with romantic feelings he has toward his best friend Gary (Billy Kay).
Gary plans to escape to California and earns money by pawning his share of the robbery loot and prostituting himself for gay sex. Although Gary introduced Howie to robbery, Gary has successfully hidden his homosexuality from naive Howie. One night, Gary takes Howie to rob the house of Big John Harrigan (Brian Cox), an ex-Marine and one of Gary's clients. Howie accidentally breaks a vase, and the boys narrowly escape from John. In the next few days, John tracks down Howie and confronts him with evidence of the break-in and gives Howie the choice between a trip to the police station and working off the debt. At first, Howie doesn't fully understand John's implications about the type of work, and Howie takes John as a surrogate father. Howie slowly figures out that John likes boys, and after Howie's father get arrested for crooked business dealings, Howie goes to John's house thinking that he has to offer John sex as payment for their friendship. John stops Howie's advances because he sees Howie as an ideal -- a boy to pure to corrupt with a sexual relationship.
The title L.I.E. refers not only to the Long Island Expressway, of which we get many time-lapse shots of traffic, but also to the lies the characters deal with in their lives. John and Gary live secret lives. Howie's father has shaky business dealings and takes on a relationship with a bimbo too soon after his wife's death. And Howie initially allows his rich lifestyle to occlude some of the realities of life.
Michael Cuesta clearly doesn't use L.I.E. to condone pederasty. Instead, he wants to give us an interesting view of one man's struggle. At one point, John's live-in boyfriend (a man about 24) tells John, "You should be ashamed." John replies that he feels shame every day -- but that shame clearly cannot overcome his attraction to young boys. Even though John turns down Howie's offer of sex, Cuesta clearly makes us understand that Howie does not function as a savior figure for John. After John drops Howie at the prison for a visit with his father, John goes cruising (on the L.I.E.) for a new boyfriend.
Howie learns that the people you love (father, best friend at school, adult male friend) all have negative aspects. They all tell lies. In this sense, Howie comes to see his mother as the symbol of purity -- the person who did not tell lies. She offered unconditional love, and all the other seem to place conditions on their relationships. So, Howie learns that even people with negative traits have worthwhile qualities, and that maybe you just have to accept the good with the bad. In time, Howie might even come to understand that even his mother must have kept secrets.
In the final scene, we see Howie standing on the L.I.E overpass, but this time he merely leans on the rail regarding traffic. He repeats the mantra from the beginning of the movie, but this time he changes the ending: "But I won't let it get me." Howie now has a more mature attitude toward his life. He knows that he can have a positive relationship with people even though they have bad traits -- in the same way that people still find the L.I.E. useful in spite of the many people that die there.
Although L.I.E. shows us the same ugly portrait of suburban America as in movies such as The Ice Storm, L.I.E. provides a more positive view. In The Ice Storm we see almost no value in the dark and ugly secrets of the suburbanites. L.I.E., on the other hand, shows that Howie has learned to survive in spite of the ugliness. Through the excellent performances of Dano and Cox, L.I.E. embues each character with both positive and negative qualities. These people don't live in a black and white world, but in a grey world where we have to accept the good we can find.
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