The Nature of Nicholas

When we grow up we throw away our old personality we've become too big for like a snake crawls out of its old skin leaving behind a dry slough. So The Nature of Nicholas is a parable about coming of age when the boy should cast away his old, already dead nature to continue on the way into his adult life. Visual design of this drama in demonstrating this idea is absolutely unusual and innovative to the degree of becoming surreal. Don't you know the song "Lose This Skin" by The Clash: "Come with me, I thought he said, but that's not him anymore, he's dead. What's it like to be so free? So free it looks like lost to me. I've got to lose this skin I'm imprisoned in." The Nature of Nicholas is like an elaborate music video to this song.

When i stop and i think about it, this is the first movie i've ever watched that was explicitly and straightforwardly queer. i found it in youtube when i was about 15, and i will never forget the profound emotion and connection i've felt with it. not only it was about something i was feeling, but it also was such a mesmerizing experience. today, 6 years later, its power is still very strong.

the whole thing feels like a dream, a nightmare, to be precise. there is density and tension in the atmosphere, highlighted by a disturbingly slow (and purposefully unnatural) pace.

the cinematography is foggy and blurred, and the camera movements and editing are fluid and slow, giving the visuals an uneven, unrealistic and nostalgic feel. the sound design has an amateurish and experimental quality that suits the film very well too, with loud, opressive ambiences (constant clocks, crickets and insects) and a haunting noise-like music to go with it.

combine all of that, with beautiful and infinite praire landscapes, great performances from all the cast, influences of body horror, doppelganger horror and surrealism, and a strong nod to magical realism: what you get it's not only a mere lgbtq+ film, but a QUEER film that defies the logic of reality and fantasy, and very acurately portrays the queer childhood and the nightmare it can become. one of my favorites, all the way.

What promised to be an interesting film of a young boy's awakening sexuality ended up a plodding, messy story that meandered all over the place. When the movie ended, I was left wondering what exactly was the message? In a Q&A session after the movie, the director was asked what was the point of the film, but he didn't seem to have an answer. The Canadian "pauses" did not add anything to the movie, other than stretch 20 minutes worth of story into a 90 minute film. On the positive side, the acting (especially Jeff Sutton as Nicholas) was very good and many shots looked beautiful. Unfortunately, this film is confusing and a major disappointment.

and yet very watchable.

I don't pretend to know what this film is about, I just know that it was very satisfying to watch. Some movies, a very few, leave you with that feeling, the one that says, yeah, that's what a movie should be; that's how you feel when you have watched cinema art.

I know I should discuss the freudian symbolism and explain how it all fits into Freud's stages of sexual maturation, but I just can't bring myself to reduce this film to such cant.

It is a mythic story, best experienced in a childlike (vs.childish)state.

I hate pretentious movies that try so hard to be art that they forget to be entertaining. This movie falls into that category. I'm not really a fan of abstract surrealism at the best of times, but bleak self-loathing surrealism can just go take a jump in the lake! The trouble with symbolism is that if it needs a guide book to tell you what's going on (especially symbolism in movies where the viewer doesn't have the time to dissect every nuance), I think it fails. It just becomes a series of directorial in-jokes. I don't mind challenging film. I can stomach dark movies. But this simply failed to reward the effort.

Furthermore, none of the non-surreal relationships (Nicholas and Bobby, Nicholas and his mother, mother and boyfriend) were remotely credible, so my mind was constantly tussling with the disbelief about their relationships, long before the actual surreal stuff started happening.

This movie had the potential to be really worthwhile, with some mature performances from the young leads forging the way, but instead it disappeared right up its own self-indulgent rectum.

Read traymasters' review above, then save yourself the time of actually watching the movie. His review is far more meaningful and lucid than the actual movie!