Mysterious Skin and my Vendetta Against Mid Editing

The first shot in Gregg Araki’s heartbreaking 2004 film Mysterious Skin is an extended long take of cereal falling onto the character of Neil (an eight-year-old boy) as he stares into the camera. It introduces one of the most important elements of the film immediately to the audience: close-ups of a character staring deeply into the camera. Looks professional, right? The movie’s 35mm looks very clean throughout the movie, and cinematographer Steve Gainer’s lens choices lead to a lot of pretty bokeh. Harold Budd and Robin Guthrie’s etherial soundtrack completely fits the dreamlike tone that Araki is going for. However, one element of the film is not nearly as professional as the others and brings the rest of the film down: the editing. Gregg Araki is a very talented man. Not only did he direct brilliant films like Mysterious Skin and Nowhere, but he also wrote and edited all of them and shot The Living End and Totally Fucked Up. I don’t want to imply that he’s some sort of talentless hack because he’s clearly not. He’s a man I have deep respect for, a man fearless in his approach to portraying queer angst. So, speaking as an occasional editor, I find it fascinating that a movie like Mysterious Skin was edited on early Final Cut Pro. I assume Araki made this choice to streamline his process and avoid budgetary concerns. And, for the most part, he’s successful in his editing. The audio is mixed well, his foley effects are convincing, there’s a lot to love about this movie on a technical level. So you may be wondering why I’m about to be so critical of his editing. And, to put it simply, I think it kills the pacing. Take the film’s final scene where Brian learns the horrible truth of what happened to him and Neil. The entire movie has been leading up to this scene, but it’s edited horribly. Cutting the music when it cuts back to Neil and Brian leads to this weird tonal dissonance where despite the dialogue and performances being completely serious, it's edited more like a comedy scene. I don’t understand why Gregg Araki made this choice. Everything else in the scene is great. The dialogue, cinematography, performances, it’s all there except for the editing. This might seem minor to some, but it’s the movie’s climactic scene. I don’t know how anyone could consider an issue like this minor.

It’s not a perfect movie by any means. Some of the dialogue is a bit goofy and blunt (Neil’s line “I am so sick of this stinkin' little buttcrack of a town!” particularly stands out in that regard). There’s some foley that sounds weird, but that stuff is forgivable to me. What isn’t forgivable is the movie’s fade transitions. As I said earlier, the editing ruins the pacing for me, and nowhere is that clearer to me than in the fade transitions. Like any tool, fade transitions can be used well or poorly, and Araki definitely uses them poorly in Mysterious Skin. I’m firmly of the belief that fade transitions are very easy to mess up. I avoid them at every chance I can, so I’m confused why Araki chose to use them as much as he does in Mysterious Skin. Without fail, they slow the movie down every single time they’re ued. It’s so frustrating because the movie is so quickly paced and often well edited. I just can’t understand Araki’s reasoning for the fade transitions.

Mysterious Skin (2004)

Despite its flaws, I’d consider Mysterious Skin a great movie. It oozes style and personality at every turn. The dialogue, while blunt, is generally very resonant and retains a certain charm that his other films have. Whenever I watch a film of his, I always become immersed in his heightened realities because I can’t think of another writer who writes characters the way Gregg Araki does. He’s one of the most unique voices in contemporary cinema. I aspire to write movies as powerful as this and Totally Fucked Up. So, although I criticize certain elements of this movie, it’s so enjoyable overall that most of my flaws with it are forgivable. What can I say, a goat is a goat no matter how imperfect a movie of there’s may be.