{"id":3698,"date":"2014-04-25T20:26:40","date_gmt":"2014-04-26T01:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/?p=3698"},"modified":"2019-03-06T16:33:46","modified_gmt":"2019-03-06T21:33:46","slug":"hide-your-smiling-faces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/25\/hide-your-smiling-faces\/","title":{"rendered":"Hide Your Smiling Faces"},"content":{"rendered":"

The specter of death casts a mysterious spell over Daniel Patrick Carbone\u2019s mesmerizing debut feature, Hide Your Smiling Faces<\/i> (2014). Set in rural northwestern New Jersey, the film deals with young kids trying to come to terms with the kinds of heavy issues for which they lack either the experience or vocabulary. In its emphasis on visual storytelling and focus on the natural world, critics have compared the film to the work of Terrence Malick. Yet Malick\u2019s vision has a more epic and cosmic sweep, whereas Carbone\u2019s episodic film is rooted in the mundane details of events that occur over the course of a single summer. In this respect, Carbone\u2019s film shares a greater affinity with Clay Jeter\u2019s Jess + Moss <\/i><\/a>(2012), or Tim Sutton\u2019s rapturous Pavilion <\/i><\/a>(2013).<\/p>\n

Hide Your Smiling Faces <\/i>begins with a metaphor: an extended shot of a snake leisurely feasting on a fish. The film cuts to a shot of the film\u2019s two protagonists \u2013 fourteen-year-old Eric (Nathan Varnson) and his nine-year-old brother, Tommy (Ryan Jones), framed by the inside of an abandoned building that overlooks a picturesque lake while it rains. Carbone creates an insular world of young kids \u2013 an all-male world, in which girls are decidedly absent. A female classmate is later heard as a disembodied voice. Two of the kids\u2019 moms also appear, but they play only limited roles in the story. The boys go boating, swim in the lake, bike down empty roads, and explore nature. For these young boys, wrestling and other physical activities serve as forms of sublimation. A large group of them routinely stage wrestling matches, in which Eric is pitted against a longer-haired friend of the same age named Tristan (Thomas Cruz).<\/p>\n

Early on, Tommy and his two friends find a dead crow to which they decide to improvise a song. One of them, Ian (Ivan Tomic), proves adept at creating sound effects. Godard said that \u201cAll you need for a movie is a gun and a girl.\u201d There aren\u2019t any girls in Carbone\u2019s world, but there is at least a gun. It is introduced by Ian, who brings out his father\u2019s pistol and shows it to Tommy and another pal, Blake (Andrew M. Chamberlain). Ian\u2019s father (Colm O\u2019Leary) catches them with it and banishes Ian: \u201cGet lost. Go cry in the woods,\u201d he snarls, before harshly ordering the other two boys to \u201cget the fuck out of here.\u201d Sometime later, after Eric and Tristan steal hamburgers and then throw the trash from a massive stone train bridge, they spot Ian\u2019s body sprawled down below.<\/p>\n

Did Ian jump or did he accidentally fall to his death? The film is ambiguous on this note. And the reactions of the kids are equally confused about what has happened. A man at the wake (Clark Middleton) tries to give it a religious spin by insisting that \u201cthe Lord has a plan for Ian,\u201d which leads to an awkward exchange with Eric. Eric and Tommy\u2019s parents also try to get them to talk about their feelings, but the two brothers instead wind up grinning inappropriately (hence, the title of the film).<\/p>\n

The boys are, in fact, deeply disturbed by Ian\u2019s death, even if they don\u2019t know how to express it properly. It comes out in other forms, some of which are self-destructive. While boating, Tristan raises the issue of death to Eric in dialogue that is spare and laconic:<\/p>\n

TRISTAN: Do you ever think about dying?
\nERIC: What?
\nTRISTAN: Like Dying. Someone killing you, or you killing yourself.
\nERIC: No, not really.
\nTRISTAN (after a long pause): I do.
\nERIC: Why?
\nTRISTAN: I don\u2019t know. I just do.
\nERIC: Are you sad?
\nTRISTAN: Yeah, I guess, a little.
\nERIC: You want to die because you\u2019re sad?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Eric\u2019s response is to use Tristan\u2019s prone body as a springboard for a dive into the lake. Right after this, Eric and Tommy\u2019s family dog, Daisy, makes a startling discovery \u2013 the carcasses of dead pets \u2013 hidden in the forest. This serves as one plot thread, especially when Daisy later disappears.<\/p>\n

While cavorting in the woods, Tristan points a rifle at Eric\u2019s head. He wonders, \u201cDo you think you\u2019ll die if I shoot you?\u201d When Eric claims not to know, he responds, \u201cWhat if I held it to your head?\u201d Tristan later calls Eric on the phone with an even more overt threat, the subtext of which is all too apparent, except to them.<\/p>\n

TRISTAN: I just don\u2019t want to be here anymore, you know. No one likes me here.
\nERIC: I do.
\nTRISTAN: What?
\nERIC: I do.
\nTRISTAN: You do what?
\nERIC: I like you. You\u2019re my friend.
\nThere is the sound of a gun click.
\nERIC: What\u2019s that?
\nAnother sound of a gun click.
\nTRISTAN: What is what?
\nERIC: That sound.
\nTRISTAN: Don\u2019t you ever wish you were someplace else?
\nERIC: I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t think so. Tristan, this is so dumb. . .
\nTRISTAN: I hate it here.
\nERIC: You\u2019re my friend.
\nTRISTAN: I don\u2019t know. I got to go, Eric. Bye, Eric.<\/p>\n

Eric tries hard to express affection for Tristan, but the boys\u2019 feelings for each other are too deeply repressed by the male adolescent culture they inhabit. Expressions of emotion can only be discussed cryptically and indirectly, as the above scene so clearly indicates. On a similar note, the younger kids, Tommy and Blake, experiment with kissing each other through a sheet of clear plastic. Later on, Eric and Tristan wrestle each other. Eric punches Tristan, who then deliberately hurts Eric\u2019s already wounded hand. Eric chases him down and holds a gun to his friend\u2019s head. With some irony, Tristan calls Eric a \u201cpsycho,\u201d before running off.<\/p>\n

Given the repressed feelings of these kids, their true reactions are often displaced. Eric, for instance, bullies Tommy physically, by tossing him into deep water to teach him how to swim or \u201cjokingly\u201d pretending to throw his younger brother off the bridge. The terror these situations cause Tommy gives Eric a charge, just as Tristan taunts Eric about suicide in order to elicit even the slightest hint of affection from him. At the dinner table one night, when Eric appears to have hurt his hand and his father questions him, Eric suddenly blurts out, \u201cI hate it here. I do. You don\u2019t care.\u201d His parents\u2019 expressions of concern lead to the exact opposite response. Hide Your Smiling Faces<\/i> is richly observant in capturing these contradictions. It brilliantly manages to capture the utterly irrational dynamic of what it feels like to be a kid.<\/p>\n

Hide Your Smiling Faces<\/i> belongs to what appears to be a new genre of post-mumblecore films. These films \u2013 Pavilion<\/i>, Jess + Moss<\/i>, Putty Hill <\/i><\/a>(2011), It Felt Like Love<\/i> (2013),\u00a0 <\/span>and Stand Clear of the Closing Doors<\/i> (2014), among others \u2013 use naturalism, but in a different way. They are primarily visual rather than verbal. They are not about post-collegiate angst and the interpersonal relationships of characters in their twenties, but explore the texture and experience of childhood and adolescence. The films deal with either death or some other traumatic event for which the characters struggle to make sense of something that\u2019s beyond their comprehension. These new films don\u2019t harken back to Cassavetes, Rogosin, and Mailer, but rather to Terrence Malick and early David Gordon Green, or perhaps to Morris Engel\u2019s The Little Fugitive<\/i> (1953).<\/p>\n

Hide Your Smiling Faces<\/i> was a surprise hit at last year\u2019s Tribeca Film Festival. It opened at Cinema Village in New York City in late March and is currently screening theatrically in select cities. It\u2019s also available on VOD from Amazon and iTunes. I first saw the film last year and welcomed a chance to revisit it now that it is more widely available. Beautifully shot by Nick Bentgen, Carbone\u2019s film transports viewers back to that world of both confusion and wonder, that early period in our lives that somehow still manages to haunt our memories.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The specter of death casts a mysterious spell over Daniel Patrick Carbone\u2019s mesmerizing debut feature, Hide Your Smiling Faces (2014). Set in rural northwestern New Jersey, the film deals with young kids trying to come to terms with the kindsRead More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3695,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3698"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3698"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4040,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3698\/revisions\/4040"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}