The Paperboy: Disturbing, Vivid, Poignant

This film takes some time to marinate. You leave the theater a little uncomfortable and slightly confused. What was the point of watching this bloody, gory mess? But then, as you continue on with your life, the film begins to settle and the images you saw hours ago still haunt you with vivid poignancy. Lee Daniels and his cast have proven two things: that they’re fearless and that every ugly story deserves a telling.

The Paperboy centers on a brutal unsolved murder in the 1960s, where the accused Hillary Van Wetter is sentenced to the electric chair. Reporter Ward Jansen (Matthew McConaughey) has retuned back to his hometown in Florida to investigate the case, after receiving intriguing new evidence. Charlotte Bless (Nicole Kidman) has been writing Van Wetter letters and believes she has the key to his innocence. She comes to stay with Jansen in his home, where his little brother Jack (Zac Efron) has been staying with the family.

After getting kicked out of college and loosing his swimming scholarship, Jack has turned over his young life to the paper route. He now works for his father who’s the newspaper’s editor and chief. When Charlotte walks into their garage, it’s love at first sight. Unfortunately for Jack, she’s 20 years his senior and in love with, well, an inmate.

The story unravels superbly, with us becoming more involved with the character’s complexities and the mysterious plot. It’s also all set to the backdrop of civil rights turmoil in the south. But the film isn’t preachy, and let’s the racial atmosphere resonate through the character’s relationships. Anita Chester, played by a surprisingly grounded and effective Macy Gray, narrates the film. She’s been the Jansen’s maid and unofficial second mother to Jack for nearly his whole life. Her narration, which seems distracting in the beginning, proves an interesting outside perspective throughout the film.

She’s practical and perceptive; the wise owl that knows each character better than they know themselves.

But when Lee Daniels makes a film, he doesn’t make it just about the plot. He loves turning over stones to reveal the filth beneath. And that’s exactly what The Paperboy is. The story is so unsettling. It features several instances of disturbing sexuality, but Daniels shows us the beauty in these and so they become beautiful. This is an ode to 1960s cinema. The juxtaposition between the elegant, slightly comical cinematography and the repugnant, flawed characters makes their lives a little easier to watch. And when Daniels drops the aesthetic and solely focuses on the scene, it’s terrifying. We remember we’re watching a story about the animalistic, the vengeful, the desirous. And we see the gruesome consequences of it all.

That’s not to say the film is perfect. Diverging from the plot midway through, Daniels takes us down an unexpected path with Ward where we look back and just want to click our red slippers home. Jack’s infatuation with Charlotte is another sub-plot that unravels into strange, almost distracting places. The much talked about “peeing” scene, where Charlotte saves Jack from a severe jellyfish attack, is out of place. But then, is it? Isn’t having a crush on someone who doesn’t like you back feel that humiliating at times?

Perhaps diverging on these roads was a necessary evil. The end of the film delivers a payoff that works extremely well. Without the “irrelevant” tangents, our connection to the characters wouldn’t be as strong and the heartbreak wouldn’t be as painful.

The Paperboy may suffer at the box office due to its uncomfortable subject matter. It’s definitely not a date-night film, and that’s putting it nicely. But come awards season it shouldn’t be ignored. Kidman disappears into Charlotte and proves herself, once again, a chameleon. Efron delivers a performance that may begin a new chapter in his career, and should. And even Cusack, an old favorite, is deliciously damaged.