Trans

The combination of sounds, acting, and the story in this film make it a small masterpiece. I loved the tension one always gets with an anti-hero. I also got a real sense of time and place--the temperature, day and night, the feel of a long night--despite this film''s short length. This film lands on my top ten list.

TRANS begins very promising, with an unusually natural acting style and equally unusual cinematography. With a documentary feel, we follow the adventures of a boy escaped from a juvenile detention center. His encounters are interesting and believable, but after about 80 minutes or so, the story just stops. What happens to the boy? We'll never know. Maybe we're not supposed to know. However, good storytelling involves a beginning, a middle, and an end. This film has no end, and therefore no story arc. This is a good first two acts of a film, but without a third act, there is no film.

With one month to serve out a Fort Myers, Florida juvenile prison term, teenager Ryan Daugherty (as Ryan Kazinski) joins two fellow inmates as they spontaneously escape from a road cleaning crew. After enjoying some fresh freedom, the other two lads desert young Mr. Daugherty. Left to his own devices, he is unable to cope. Daugherty can't differentiate between those who try to help him and those who would get him in deeper trouble. After visiting little brother Jon, he becomes determined to visit their long lost mother.

Julian Goldberger's "Trans" is a semi-documentary, film festival friendly effort. The story's beginning is very good, with Daugherty's boredom and alienation nicely visualized. His natural and convincing narration gives the film a voice, and would have been welcome throughout the film. Although "Kazinski" presents as a rather ordinary, confused, and probably unintelligent soul, his plight elicits sympathy. However, a series of unspectacular and/or improvised events squanders much of film's initial appeal. An uplifting ending helps.

***** Trans (9/11/98) Julian Goldberger ~ Ryan Daugherty, Justin Lakes, Jon Daugherty, Michael Gulnac

This movie feels astonishingly like you are watching a documentary. The first time I caught it I thought I was watching Gummo, or some documentary. Like a documentary, sometimes plot structure is there or isn't. That disappointed me a bit but the second time I was willing to cut it some slack, and just take it in. I finally understood that this is a remarkable achievement. I prefer it without structure now. Movies which kick you between plot points never have a prayer of achieving anything this natural. So you don't recognize where you are at any point. Guess what? the other ninety nine percent of movies released any year are for you...

Ryan, the sweet dumb teen of the movies focus is drawn to serial distractions and fleeting moments with no sense of the impending squalor that awaits him unless he can develop a longer attention span. This IS exactly what suburban adolescence is like. I remember being this frustrated, aimless and nihilistically hopeless.

The suburban environment adults provide young people are desolate, unstimulating places of abandoned dreams, or dreams in holding patterns while the bills are paid. While that rubric is getting worn out in film, this treatment is very fresh.

Truffauts 400 Blows covers the aimlessness of boyhood in a similar way.

This film reminded me of the Iranian film "White Balloon", in the following sense.

In White Balloon, the whole plot is "two kids go to buy a goldfish, and a bunch of stuff happens to them along the way". That's it. Nothing else. There isn't necessarily any point to any of the stuff that happens to them. There isn't any theme. There's just... lots and lots of stuff. And then the movie just ends.

In the same way, this movie is: a kid escapes from juvenile detention, and a bunch of stuff happens to him while he's on the run. And then the movie is over. What's the point? No point.

If you can get PAST that, then there's a lot to enjoy here. This, in spite of the fact, that as another commenter pointed out, there are lots of technical flaws in the cinematography, that might *appear* to be intentional, "for effect", but are probably just goof ups or inexperience. However, in between the out of focus shots and the "unsteady-cam" shots and the underexposed shots are some really interesting sequences and very nice use of music to create mood.

To really enjoy this film, change your expectations: see it as a series of 3-5 minute "mini-plays" that all happen to revolve around the same character, Ryan Kazinski. And then, just to watch this young actor, Ryan Daugherty in his first feature film, is a real treat. Especially heartbreaking is the scene between Ryan and his brother (played by his real life brother, Jon Daugherty.) I expect that after some casting directors see this film, the phone may be ringing in the Daugherty household.