To reach Marfa, TX from Dallas, just get on I-20 and drive west until you’re numb all over, the inside of your car smells like sweaty balls and you’ve stared at road so long that you think you might be hallucinating.
When that happens you’re about halfway there. Find a burger joint, relax, fuel up and check your car’s grille for dead armadillo parts.
It’s a drive is what I’m trying to say. Marfa is way out there. It’s removed. The nearest airport to it is two hundred miles away. For most, traveling to Marfa requires a touch of craziness, a taste for the sun-baked vistas of West Texas and, most importantly, dedication.
That’s p
art of why I wanted to see this Larry Clark movie. We already know what it’s going to be about. Teenagers exploring themselves, exploring others, exploring drugs and sex, while Clark’s camera stays in the room to take it ALL in, from the nudity to the awkward moments to the pimples. The thing about Clark is that he’s not only about the sleaze. Rather, he finds real inspiration in the empty eyes of youth. Clark’s kids are never witty. They don’t know a good decision from a bad one. They’re undomesticated animals and the world is a jungle full of predators. Clark’s vision is so raw that one gets the sense from his films that he’s a frustrated documentary maker who just doesn’t have the patience. So, he stages his own slices of life, open-ended episodes peopled with imperfect beauties.
We also sometimes get a real nasty motherfucker in the mix who reminds us that these kids are not villains no matter how stupid they get. There’s a Border Patrol guy here, played by Jeremy St. James, who may be the biggest creep in movies this decade so far. He’s so awful because we’ve all met a guy like him, a person who gives in to his mostly sexual impulses and just loves himself for it, a prideful predator, a dominant cock-slinger who prefers an unwilling subordinate, a sadist who’s not looking for a masochist—he wants a victim. Your skin crawls when he’s onscreen. As with the kids, Clark gives him little fanfare. Clark’s camera just points and shoots, like a microscope that finds a cancer cell.
In other words, this film is just Larry Clark doing what Larry Clark does, but, hey, this time it’s set way the fuck out there in Marfa, where half the world is dirt and the other half is sky. Clark made the drive. I salute him.