Hesher

A film about a stranger who moves into the house of a family that cannot grieve. T. J. is thirteen. His mother died in a car crash; his father does not get off the sofa and his grandmother is trying to hold the house together. The wrecked car sits in a scrapyard and the boy goes to look at it every day. One day, breaking into an empty building, he runs into someone: long-haired, tattooed, called Hesher. Without asking anyone, the man moves into their house. Hesher does not help. He swears, breaks things, does dangerous things and makes the situation worse. But he also breaks the silence in the house. The idea is that there is no polite way to grieve. The family carries its sorrow by not speaking, and this man from outside forces them out of it. The film sits in a difficult place generically: at once hard comedy and family drama. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Hesher, Devin Brochu the boy, Natalie Portman the woman working at the supermarket and Rainn Wilson the father. Spencer Susser directed; his first feature. An interesting example for anyone who likes American independent cinema and mixtures of genre. Before you watch, know this: the character's behaviour is continuously uncomfortable and the film does not try to make it endearing.