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Yes, this film is titled Dahmer, but to expect it to be an actual case study of Jeffrey Dahmer's specific psychology seems wrongheaded. This is not a documentary of the Jeffrey Dahmer case. Instead, this film uses several details of Jeffrey Dahmer's life and crimes to give a very creepy portrait of human emotional need turned in on itself. The Dahmer of this film is a fictional character whose unacknowledged desires for love and warmth lead him to manipulate, then molest, and finally to murder the men he desires. Rather than treating the viewer to a jolly fury of blood and guts, this film probes the sad, banal, emptiness of real violence and the shame that lies at its roots.
As I read some of the responses to this film, I am delighted to see that several knuckle- draggers who watched this film hoping to get their rocks off by seeing human bodies mutilated for their cowardly viewing pleasure, have instead found themselves confronted by something much more real, recognizable, and distressing-- complicity in a life of violent loneliness and self-hatred. I am thrilled that this movie really bummed them out. I hope that it left them feeling totally disoriented, unsatisfied, and unsettled. Good films such as this one should leave gape-mouthed viewers feeling this way.
If, however, you have read this far without moving your lips, then you will appreciate how this film utilizes powerful imagery, great performances, and good writing to lure you into a very dark region of the human heart, if only for a hundred-and-one minutes.
score 10/10
pseawrig 2 February 2007
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1589483/ |
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14-4-2020 00:07:07