The Mudge Boy (17 January 2003)
directed by Michael Burke
starring Emile Hirsch, Tom Guiry, Richard Jenkins, Pablo Schreiber, Zachary Knighton, Ryan Donowho, Meredith Handerhan, Beckie King, George Woodard
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MPAA rating: Studio: First Cold Press Productions, Showtime Pictures Script: Michael Burke Music: Marcelo Zarvos Running time: 94 minutes Tags: chickens; cows; Drama; farms; father-son relationships; homosexuality; rape; Vermont Tactical strength: [6/10]
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for strong sexual content including graphic dialogue, a rape, and language
I think we all know kids like Duncan Mudge (Emile Hirsch) who retain their childhood innocence well into adolescence in spite of all the events happening around them. The film opens to Duncan's mother having a fatal heart attack while bicycling along a Vermont country road. Duncan and his father, Edgar (Richard Jenkins), live on their rural farm and each shows his grief in different ways.
While the kids Duncan's age seem interested in trucks, alcohol, and sex, Duncan raises his late mother's chickens, delivers eggs, and sings in church. Duncan clearly wants to fit in with the local kids, and in rural Vermont, it seems Duncan has a limited choice of friends. In an attempt to fit in, Duncan offers to buy his friends some beer and rides along with them in the back of a pick-up truck. In spite of these efforts, the local kids still call Duncan "chicken boy" and tease him about keeping a chicken as a pet.
I doubt Duncan's father lived with Duncan for fourteen years without having suspicions that he has a sensitive boy, but when he sees Duncan walking through the house in his mother's fur coat, Edgar decides he needs to pack up his former wife's effects and move them to the barn. Interestingly, we see Edgar find hidden bottles of alcohol among his wife's things. The story line makes no additional references to the spirits, and even director Michael Burke doesn't provide any explanation in the director's commentary for the implied alcoholism. Edgar decides he needs to make Duncan into a man and has Duncan start helping with the farm work. In spite of the long and arduous labor, Duncan seems unchanged by his father's attempts.
One of the local kids, Perry (Tom Guiry), lives on a dairy farm near Duncan's home and for some reason takes a liking to Duncan. Unlike Duncan who has feminine features, Perry has quite a masculine physique and brags about having had sex with about every girl he and Duncan know. Perry occasionally stands up for Duncan against the other kids and eventually shares some of his personal spaces with Duncan, like jumping into a river from a remote railroad bridge. We see a relationship developing between Duncan and Perry, but we suspect that Duncan and Perry have very different understandings of the relationship.
Writer and director Michael Burke does an excellent job at creating a portrait of Duncan Mudge, but he doesn't really take the story to a satisfying conclusion. We see a couple of traumatic months and know that these events will have repercussions for the rest of Duncan's life, but we don't get any sense of how the rest of his life will progress. We don't know if he will recover from his grief or if the grief will completely overcome him. The Mudge Boy expands the story told in Burke's short film Fishbelly White, but the longer film still feels like an expanded short story and not like a complex novel.
