Stronger

Taking into account the scourge that comes with the standard bio-pic, all its inherent limitations, it is at least twice as difficult to make the dreaded "topical" bio-pic -- that is, making a film about a figure of particular, direct current relevancy.

In other words, you can make a film about Chairman Mao, and have the echoes of that story reverberate into the present day easily enough, but it's far more difficult to make a film about someone currently in the news (think the dreadful Julian Assange bio-pic The Fifth Estate), and have it be anything other than pap contrivance.

So, massive kudos to David Gordon Green, who has made such a film -- about Jeff Bauman, the Boston Marathon bombing survivor, who lost his legs in the blast, yet was able to help the FBI identify at least one of the terrorists involved in the scheme -- and has made it more than watchable. It can't quite transcend all the pitfalls of the genre, but by and large, it treats with grace and honest solemnity a subject all too easy to prop into cheap, rousing hyperbole. (Think Peter Berg's Boston Marathon bombing film, Patriot's Day, a jingoistic ramble of melodramatic scenes all building up to give Mark Wahlberg the opportunity to bellow "They messed with the wrong city!")

It helps when you have a pair of leads as committed to their roles as Jake Gyllenhaal and Tatiana Maslany. Gyllenhaal, naturally, plays Bauman, a slightly goofy everyman, who works as a chicken fryer at a nearby Costco. Bauman loves his neighborhood, his family, led by mouthy matriarch Patty (Miranda Richardson), the Sawx, and Erin (Maslany), the ex-girlfriend of his dreams, whom he still routinely pines over. In fact, it is because of Erin's running in the marathon, and Bauman's determination to be at the finish line, visibly cheering her on, that puts him directly in harm's way, a point that, in the long emotional imbroglio that follows, comes up more than a few times.

Upon coming to in the hospital after the bombing, he tells the FBI what he remembers about the suspicious-looking young man he saw just prior to the explosion, information, we are led to believe, that ultimately helped positively identify at least one of the culprits. This news makes him an instant celebrity, and in many peoples' minds, a hero of sorts, a heavy mantle that doesn't ever sit well with Jeff, despite everyone else happily jumping on the bandwagon, including his somewhat chaotic and cantankerous family, who take to the spoils of Jeff's fame like a pack of hyenas to a fresh antelope carcass.

Through it all, Erin, guilt-ridden and traumatized, tries to help Jeff sort out his life, maintaining his medical appointments, working with him on his physical therapy, but feels increasingly as if Jeff is just throwing in the towel, embittered by his newfound fame, and silently resentful of his family's involvement. Things come to a nasty head after the Bruins ask Jeff to come out onto center ice before a playoff game, waving their flag, a task that sounds like a benediction but instead to him becomes an unimaginable burden, a song-and-dance show to represent a "hero" even though he feels like anything but.

It may sound like stock stuff, but what Gordon Green manages to do, working from the script by John Pollono, adapting Bauman's own autobiography, is slice his scenes into slivers of emotion and insight without offering automatic resolutions. Time and again, a scene of intense drama will begin to take place, an argument between Jeff and his mother, or Jeff and Erin, but the director cuts out before we ever get to the obvious payoff moment. The effect of this is to tone down the story's inherent melodrama, to layer different rhythms on top of what we expect to be a steady pulse of uplifting emotional beats.

Watching Gyllenhaal and Maslany work together in these scenes is like watching a pair of seasoned mixed-doubles tennis players work in rousing synchronicity, approaching each emotional volley in a kind of smooth tandem. Gyllenhaal's Bauman starts out like the glad-handing protagonist from an early Tom Hanks flick, a man so comfortable in his own skin and in his small piece of the New England world he inhabits, he mistakes that for true inner peace. When his world is detonated, he at first tries to play off the seriousness of the situation with humor (upon first coming to consciousness after the explosion, he immediately refers to himself as Lt. Dan from Forrest Gump), but once he burns through that bit of denial, he's left with very little else, until Erin shows him a more honest and truthful way to survive.

For her part, Maslany works small wonders as the loving but fiery Erin. She's given the last line of the film, an apparently improvised response to one of Jeff's long entreaties, that sweetly puts to closure a film whose heart is truly in the right place. If Gordon Green can't quite escape the obligatory character arc behind the simple narrative of loss and redemption, he at least gives us a pair of talented young actors at the peak of their powers to carry it through.

MovieStyle on 09/22/2017