L.I.E.received an NC-17 rating because it deals with a taboo topic in our society: pedophilia. This should not frighten anyone into not seeing this superb film with exceptionally good acting. L.I.E.intertwines the life of a confused 15-year-old, Howie Blitzer, with an absentee father, his deadbeat friends and a charming pedophile?all against the backdrop of lifeless suburban Long Island.
The movie begins and ends with the Long Island Expressway, which affects everyone’s life in one way or another. The L.I.E. is the place where many, including Howie’s mother, have died, causing him to spend hours on the guardrails of an overpass, as if he wished to somehow feel her presence.
Howie’s life has not been going very well, especially since he started hanging out with the wrong crowd. Howie’s father ignores him, as he tries to stay out of trouble from shady business dealings and screws some bimbo in the house at all hours. Howie and his friends, led by the charismatic Gary, break into neighborhood homes to have a good time (and steal some goods in the process). Gary is gay, although not openly, and Howie, whose sexual feelings Gary awakens, falls in love with him. Howie internalizes his emotions as he grows closer to Gary. It is this friendship, coupled with their breaking and entering habit, which leads Howie to John Harrigan’s house. Big John, as Harrigan is also known, finds out through Gary, who is also a male hustler, that Howie also broke into his house.
Big John is not your run-of-the-mill pedophile who preys on little kids outside of schools. Big John prefers an older, teenage and male crowd (even though he avows at a later point in the movie to like women). Big John is a patriotic former Marine who has garnered everyone’s respect in the town, which is exactly what makes him all the more despicable in the viewer’s eye: the fact that he is a charming predator, an affable monster.
In a dizzying twist of events Howie finds himself in Big John’s home. After Howie’s father is arrested by the FBI, Big John assumes the role of father figure in Howie’s life. One must wonder whether this is Howie’s unconscious way of getting back at his father by replacing him with Big John much like he replaced the mother with some hooch so quickly after her death.
The plot is congruent and well-structured, except for the sequence of events toward the end. Big John’s desires are not explicit, since one was led to believe that his sole interest in Howie was sexual, even though nothing of the sort occurs. Also, the disappointing ending seems to have come out of nowhere. One might wonder if the original ending was the cause of the harsh NC-17 rating, and the present ending was merely a way to appease the “censors” of the MPAA. The ending seems to have been pasted awkwardly into the final scenes, but it should not deter someone from watching this film.
The actors deserve praise for their great performances, particularly Howie (Paul Franklin Dano) and Big John (Brian Cox). Dano convincingly plays the role of a confused teenager whose life is spiraling toward inevitable disaster.
This movie by no means condones pedophilia, and the rating it received is undeserved. The message could be interpreted as being one of personal redemption amidst the turbulent times and frightening people that characterize adolescent life. The film places a challenge upon the viewer: to assess a controversial topic under the auspices of both the perpetrator’s and the (willing) victim’s distinct perceptions of what occurs. Pedophilia is bad, and so are its practitioners, but the movie refuses to make it that simple; it instead humanizes this sexual perversion and injects it with emotion and mixed-up love.
