Trans

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 is a very good and honest movie. You feel how this kid felt, and I especially relate because I used to just walk around as a kid (but obviously not as a convict or something.) You really feel for the main character in this movie, it has its own feel to it, very real. Very honest. Its not so much a movie as an experience, like a doc. film but real. Its certainly worth the watch. I saw it and it grabbed me enough to stay there, watch it and forget what I was doing. Any film that can do that has achieved it's goal in bringing you into the realm of cinema and is worth the watch.

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.

The only description I was given of this movie before seeing it was "It's f*cked up" from about five different people. I didn't know what to feel after the movie was over. Should I admire the technical genius of the mise-en-scene? or hate the lack of closure to this lame story? See it for yourself if you haven't already, it's worth the experience.