ThirteenProduced by Tim Bevan, Liza Chasin, Eric

Fellner and Holly Hunter; directed by

Catherine Hardwicke; screenplay by Catherine

Hardwicke and Nikki Reed; cinematography

by Elliot Davis; original music by Mark

Mothersbaugh; edited by Nancy Richardson;

production design by Carol Stober; costume

design by Cindy Evans; starring Evan Rachel

Wood, Nikki Reed, Holly Hunter, Jeremy

Sisto, Brady Corbet and Deborah Unger;

Color, 100 mins. Distributed by Fox

Searchlight Pictures, 10201 West Pico Blvd.,

Los Angeles, CA 90035, phone (310) 369-4402.

Adolescence, we all know, represents aperiod of intense emotional upheaval. Psy-chiatrists like Erik Erikson describe it as atime characterized by the struggle betweenan eternal wish to cling to a childhood past,while, at the same time, an equally powerfulwish to break away into the promised landof adulthood. While many adolescents awk-wardly experiment with sex, true sexual inti-macy with a boyfriend or girlfriend isimpossible until a young person has givenup, once and for all, the childish aspects ofattachment to his or her parents. In a perfectworld, adolescents hold on to the valuablethings their parents pass along, while bid-ding farewell to the idealized notion thattheir parents were more than simply human.

Thirteen revolves around many of thepainful truths of adolescence. The film isabout how thirteen-year-old Tracy (EvanRachel Wood), bored by school and indif-ferent to her mother’s struggles, suddenlydecides bad girls have more fun. A copycatat heart, Tracy initiates a friendship withAlpha she-wolf Evie (played by actress andcoscreenwriter Nikki Reed) who transportsTracy out of her junior-high classrooms intoa teen world of sex, drugs, and petty larceny.

Rebellion endows Tracy with drive andenergy—also accompanied by lack of direc-tion, confusion, and zero self-respect. It’s inthis preliminary take of Tracy, that Thir-teen’s director, Catherine Hardwicke, servesup a flashy portrait of a troubled young girl,who, in all likelihood, is wondering to her-self why she took all the crazy risks she didonce the film’s ninety-five-minute running-time has elapsed.

Tracy’s frenzied odyssey begins on Mel-rose Avenue, where Evie—her newly adopt-ed teenage-wasteland tour guide—likes tobrowse the racks of trendy boutiquesWinona-Ryder-style. In an effort to strike achord of admiration in Evie’s shopliftingheart, Tracy suddenly finds herself stealingsome foggy Angelena’s purse. Then, togeth-er with the stoked Evie, the girls take off ona big, thrilling shoe-shopping spree.

Thirteen wants to be taken seriously, andHardwicke attempts to enlist the attentionof serious-minded audiences by flirting withsubjects filling library bookshelves with psy-choanalytic literature. Kleptomania is thefirst dysfunction Hardwicke calls to our

attention. It was once perceived as providingan erotic thrill but more recently, psychoan-alysts have refined their thinking. Kleptoma-niacs are often young men and womenattempting to escape from threats to theirpsychological survival. They feel they’vebeen deprived of some fundamental securityin their personal relationships, and theyinterpret stealing more as an entitlementthan a crime. In a city as rampantly obsessedwith consumerism as Los Angeles, with itsnear-blind worship of all things material,the feelings Hardwicke ascribes to Tracy areonly intensified. In Thirteen, Tracy and Evieget terribly excited about stealing, whethermoney or cool clothing, and it’s easy toimagine a psychiatrist observing that thegirls’ actions—and the elation they experi-ence—serves to reassure them they’re notbeing abandoned by their families. Theirdeep-seated anxieties are relieved, at leasttemporarily.

The second psychological disorder Hard-wicke unloads on her audience—one thatguaranteed the film its conspicuous andsought-after controversy—is a rare one.Practiced almost exclusively among teenagegirls, ‘delicate self-cutting’ is the form ofself-mutilation Tracy secretly and sensation-ally practices in Thirteen. PsychoanalystLouise J. Kaplan, in her book, Female Per-versions: The Temptation of Emma Bovary,writes that, “[f]or the self-mutilator, whohas already suffered a childhood of loss anddeprivation and trauma, to accept that thechildhood past is over and that there is noway of redeeming failed hopes would meanan unleashing of violent hatred towards thedepriving ones, which dashes all hope of aforgiving reunion with them. For such anadolescent, therefore, the painful process ofmourning, with all its undercurrent of aban-donment, [and] separation, is unendurable.”

The idea Fox Searchlight Films is trying

to sell is that Thirteen portrays a young girlexperiencing a lot of pain in her life and thatshe deals with it in the manner Kaplandescribes. By showing Tracy’s girlfriendgleefully punching her smack in the face atthe outset of the film—or, later, by showingTracy mutilating herself—we’re supposed tobe witnessing how teenagers learn not to feelpain. When Hardwicke shows Tracy lockingherself up in the bathroom, opening themedicine cabinet, and cutting her wrist witha small, shiny pair of scissors, we’re sup-posed to believe this girl is simply over-whelmed by a sense of her own insignifi-cance. But the problem with the movie isthat nothing we witness supports the film-maker’s theory.

It would be emotionally inconceivablethat when Tracy’s mom (played beautifullyby actress Holly Hunter) brings a strangeman into the house—a recovering drugaddict at that—Tracy wouldn’t feel this tobe a scary intrusion. Yet, the extent to whichTracy indulges her fears of her mom’sboyfriend, Brady (played by the charismaticJeremy Sisto), seems out of whack. In fact,Brady’s quest in Thirteen is not all that dif-ferent from Tracy’s—certainly not as unre-lated as the screenwriters might lead you tobelieve. Like Tracy, Brady is a searcher, but aman who knows the grim downside of soar-ing off into never-never land. Like all recov-ering addicts, Brady must find himself. He’sforced, without drugs, to look at somethingin himself—his own failure—that few menmust fully face. Confronting failure honestlyhas the potential to evoke genuine humaninsight—if not art—in the face of seeminglyoverwhelming anxiety, torture, and tempta-tion. Yet at no point does Hardwicke feelany compunction to acknowledge thecourage reflected in Brady’s quiet attempt toreject a dishonest life—or to examine howthis might positively impact Tracy.

22 CINEASTE, Winter 2003

Melanie (Holly Hunter, left), mother to thirteen-year-old Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood),has difficulty in relating to her troubled daughter in Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen.

For instance, it’s easy to see drug addic-tion as a form of masochism, a subject thefilmmakers don’t hesitate to exploit whenthey turn their cameras on Tracy. Drug useis a daily mechanistic ritual, too, one that—in its own perverse way—keeps alive what-ever sense of life and joy an addict is capableof feeling. Yet instead of bringing clarity tothe dilemma that Brady shares with his girl-friend’s daughter, Hardwicke instead sets upher male protagonist, at least in Tracy’s eyes,as some sort of vaguely sinister bogeyman.There’s a quick, obtuse, and nightmarishburst of scenes in Thirteen, and we don’tknow with any degree of certainty whetherwhat we’re watching entails some sort ofattempted sexual assault or not. We seeTracy, petrified with fear, standing beforeBrady as he thrashes about in some sort ofdrug or alcohol-induced frenzy. Perhaps,the director sees this as Brady’s own versionof ‘acting out.’ What truly defines Bradyhowever, thanks to Sisto’s calm and transfix-ing presence, is his desire for a new kind offreedom—the freedom from having to do ortake anything. As a fresh, unexpected sourceof inspiration for Tracy’s liberation fromslavish behavior, the endless possibilitiesBrady offers in Thirteen are ignored.

Holly Hunter, as Tracy’s mom Melanie,is not some aloof suburban puritan, muchless a spaced-out coke-whore turning tricksin the living room. Nor is she one of thoseclueless parents who mindlessly forces herown child to experience what she wentthrough when she was an adolescent.Melanie is a woman keenly aware of heryoung daughter’s needs to be understood,noticed, taken seriously, and respected.She’s learned something from life. Melanieis a loving, available parent, hip to theabsurdities of teenage life. She tries as hardas she possibly can to provide a warmheart-ed climate for her children. She’s not per-fect—who is?—yet even in this respect shereveals adulthood’s own false roads. If any-thing, perhaps Melanie identifies a little toomuch with her teenage daughter. Trying tomake ends meet as a hair stylist, Melanie, itis clear, has made no huge investment in herown education or job training. If she’s guiltyof anything, it’s downward mobility. Per-haps Melanie’s own adolescent dreams andideals have impeded her assuming the fis-cal—if not moral—responsibilities of adult-hood.

Paradoxically, it is the intensely palpablehumanity that Hunter brings to her portray-al of Tracy’s mother that makes Tracy’s self-mutilations feel so entirely gratuitous.Melanie’s many and considerable virtues—both as mother and friend—undermine theemotional logic of the film. Her home is nohaven of prosperity—it is comfortable, iffrayed around the edges—although Tracyconsiders it substandard, and no doubtmany successful Hollywood art directorswould agree. But Tracy’s universe doesn’textend far beyond the repository of hip con-formity that is Melrose Avenue. There are

no burning issues on her fertile teenagemind beyond shopping. Issues that mightincite the same righteous indignation as cav-iling about the paltry amount of her father’schild support checks—say, for instance, thefate of the countless thirteen-year-old illegalimmigrants coming to Los Angeles eachyear, the sheer number of teenagers mur-dered in South Central and East L.A. on adaily basis, or the amount of federal andstate spending allocated to the city’s healthcare and education of young people—thesethings are all way off this girl’s radar, andthat of the film. No doubt placing Tracy’swoes in any kind of realistic moral or socialcontext would detract from Thirteen’s colos-sally self-absorbed drama, just as the film’smyriad decoration schemes and flashy juxta-positions attempt to enhance it. A creepingand uncomfortable awareness dawns on usthat this girl’s sense of anger and despair isfar, far out of proportion. Fundamentally,Tracy is lucky.

Despite Tracy’s trendy kind of energyand self-confidence—and her supreme tal-ent for masking her own inner turmoil—itwould make far more dramatic sense toattribute her dark, self-destructive moods toEvie. Evie’s emotionally remote motherBrooke, played deftly by Deborah Unger, isso completely self-absorbed, so emotionallyshaky, that we silently wonder why Evie isn’tthe girl holed up in the bathroom slashingher wrist. Perhaps it’s a belief of the writersthat Evie’s way of dealing—of repressing herown sense of pain and loss—is in simplymirroring her mother’s shallow, predatorybehavior.

Which brings up another of the film’sself-congratulatory promotional claims—that the screenplay was coauthored by thir-teen-year-old actress, Nikki Reed. The pub-licity surrounding the teenage screenwriter/actor feels more like a built-in excuse tooverlook the script’s thinness, or worse,another cynical marketing ploy. Thirteen’scharacters often suffer from an inability toexpress what’s bugging them. In a sense, youcould say that is an accurate depiction. Butit’s difficult to empathize with characters,when access to their emotional world is lim-ited to flashy, kinetic images, and a catchysoundtrack. A serious appreciation of Tracyand Evie’s vicissitudes could be enhanced bya screenwriter’s willingness—or ability—toput their feelings into words. It’s not an easytask, but when distributors draw attentionto the script, they must take responsibilityfor it. Lots of people want to read a script todeepen their understanding of a goodmovie. One imagines that in the case ofThirteen, as Joan Didion once remarked in adifferent context, such an understandingmight emerge as much from the deal memo.The cutie-pie ending is a case in point. Thebad girls get their comeuppance, and thegood girls hang tough. Instead of hating her-self now, Tracy can hate the movie’s twoevil-minded scapegoats—Evie and hermother.

No one doubts that allowing young peo-ple to experience their legitimate emotionsis a liberating thing—and when presentedrealistically our awareness of humanity isenlarged. Take a look at Star Maps, BoysDon’t Cry, or Raising Victor Vargas, forinstance.

Sure, teenage life is harsh, but what wesee in Thirteen isn’t reality, despite the film’s(and its distributor’s) inflated claims. Thir-teen doesn’t push boundaries. It merely pan-ders to a market willing to buy the hype thatit somehow is pushing boundaries.—Robert

Goethals

Shattered GlassProduced by Craig Baumgarten, Adam

Merims, Gaye Hirsch and Tove Christensen;

written and directed by Billy Ray;

cinematography by Mandy Walker; edited by

Jeffrey Ford; production design by François

Séguin; costume design by Renée April;

music by Mychael Danna; starring Hayden

Christensen, Peter Sarsgaard, Hank Azaria,

Chloë Sevigny, Melanie Lynskey, Steve Zahn,

Rosario Dawson, Cas Anvar. Color, 103 mins.

Distributed by Lions Gate Films, 4553 Glencoe

Avenue #200, Marina Del Rey, CA 90292,

phone (310) 314-2000.

The filmmakers of Shattered Glass, noless than nearly all others who have com-mented on the Stephen Glass scandal, seemhaunted by the legend of Bob Woodwardand Carl Bernstein. As viewers of All thePresident’s Men will recall, those two youngWashington Post metropolitan reporterstook on the President of the United States,exposed Richard Nixon’s lies about theWatergate break-in, and accomplished noless (so that film would have us believe)than the salvation of the Republic. Theirsaga hovers over Shattered Glass as a shiningexample, a challenge, and also something ofa mocking irony for the screen retelling ofhow, a quarter century later, rival reportersexposed the lies of a magazine journalist andhelped to rescue not the Republic, but TheNew Republic. It’s as if no one can look atthe Stephen Glass affair without uncon-sciously invoking the old Marxian truismthat history repeats itself, the first time astragedy, the second as farce.

Glass’s story unfolds in the film during1998 as the admired young writer for thevenerable Washington political weekly tum-bles into ignominy as a serial fabricator ofhis news reports. Once the first breach in hiscredibility is established, despite Glass’sextraordinary efforts at concealment, a finaltally reveals that twenty-seven of the forty-one articles he wrote for the magazine werebased on invented facts and falsehood. Thisgross breach of journalistic ethics that Shat-tered Glass dramatizes has been made evenmore pertinent by the uncanny replicationof its main features in the Jayson Blair affairat The New York Times. Why would the

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