MovieChat Forums > Billy the Kid (2007) Discussion > What do people see in this?

What do people see in this?

posted 16 years ago by danielhm
4 replies | jump to latest

I spent most of the movie the same way I spent most of my 15th year: with my eyes closed, mumbling "make it stop, make it stop!". Had an exit not required slipping past the director I would have taken that option.

If you take your normal 15yo boy, put a camera in his face and ask what he's thinking, he will say "nothing". Maybe goof for the camera if you're lucky. Billy is no different except his condition prevents him from censoring himself. It could fairly easily be argued that Billy's thoughts are not altogether different from those of his cohort. Many people in my screening were wondering when Billy would start murdering his classmates, or some such. My reply is that many 15yo boys think many of the same things as Billy but have the sense not to say them out loud.

Even after listening to Ms. Venditti I am not sure what, if any, point she was trying to make. If it is just a "slice o' life" exercise then she is pretty close to the border of exploitation of the boy's disability, and I can't tell which side of that border she's landed on.

Just my view.

Dan

[–] 16 years ago

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[–] bliss66 16 years ago

Dan, I watched this at home (it aired on More4 in the UK earlier this week) and the same response of watching the film with my eyes closed, groaning (good-naturedly, of course); I had to look away and just listen to the audio at certain parts, sometimes I muted the audio and just watched the screen. The trailers for the film said that it won several audience awards at film festivals and the whole time I could not imagine what this would be like in a cinema with a large group of people - did they squirm the way I did or did they laugh, was he perceived as heroic or pathetic?

It was just excruciatingly intimate, that's for sure. Even beyond Grey Gardens.

You draw the conclusion that it was similar to your own 15th year and I think that is an apt observation.

Since Venditti never really makes any attempt to explain the boy's disability, it does seem unlikely that she is attempting to exploit it. In the end, I admired his bravery but wondered if having a film crew follow him around a small town gave him the gravitas to act out or if he always behaved that way.

To both their credit, there were things that he was unwilling to share with the camera and, for the most part, Venditti respected that.

[–] LoveIsTheVaccine 15 years ago

Actually, it was only after the movie was completed that anyone even knew about his disability. Nobody had any clue he was Aspergers' until she was halfway through editing. She only filmed him because he was a fascinating kid at a lunch table in a high school she was working on something else in. She had no knowledge of his Aspergers' until much, much later.
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T~O
"Hell's Not So Bad If You Get To Keep An Angel With You"

[–] 15 years ago

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