LOGGERHEADS / Tim Kirkman (2005)

August 28th, 2007 by Scott Marks

Kip Pardue in LOGGERHEADS (2005)

LOGGERHEADS

Written & Directed by Tim Kirkman

Starring: Kip Pardue, Michael Kelly, Tess Harper, Bonnie Hunt

Running Time: 95 min.

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Rating:

Three seemingly unrelated stories set in North Carolina take place over the course of three consecutive years.

Kure (pronounced: Curie) Beach, 1999: While on his morning jog, George (Michael Kelly), a local motel manager, spots drifter Mark (Kip Pardue) protecting a turtle’s nest. Sympathetic to learn that Mark is HIV+ (and dumbstruck by the young man’s beauty) George takes him in.

Eden, 2000: Robert (Chris Sarandon) and Elizabeth (Tess Harper) are the town minister and his wife. He frets that the new neighbors are Mexican (or worse — gay) while she empties a half-a-can of air freshener every time she sneaks a cigarette.

Asheville, 2001: Grace (Bonnie Hunt), a rental car agent, searches the eyes of a young customer for the son she gave up for adoption. Breaking rank from the mother she was forced to move back in with (Michael Learned), Grace quits her job to search for her boy.

This is a film that’s near impossible to discuss without revealing key plot points. Even though the “how” is infinitely more interesting to uncover than the “why,” I will not play the role of spoiler. Here is what I can safely tell you about Loggerheads. So as not to disorient the viewer, sounds and overlapping dialog are initially used as location identifiers. After about the third transition where crashing waves are used to signify Kure Beach, we get our sea legs and the technique is put to rest. The three stories do eventually intertwine and what is most interesting is the way in which screenwriter/director Tim Kirkman doles out the information.

With the exception of some clunky exchanges between Grace and her mother, Kirkman’s dialogue is as biting as it is condescension-free. This is his first narrative film. He directed the 1998 documentary Dear Jesse, in which the openly gay filmmaker addressed America’s favorite homophobe, Sen. Jesse Helms.

The actors are all to be commended. No offense to Ms. Harper, but she looks and acts the role of an uptight pastor’s wife a little too convincingly. Best remembered for his roles as Al Pacino’s “wife” in Dog Day Afternoon, Mariel Hemingway’s rapist in Lipstick, and the voice of Jack Skellington in The Nightmare before Christmas, it was great to once again see Chris Sarandon in a film that didn’t go directly to home video. He is no less menacing in short-sleeved Wal-Mart “dress” polyester than he was wearing hip seventies gear, particularly since he promoted from a casual sociopath to one ordained by the Catholic church

The film’s biggest revelation is Bonnie Hunt. As the scared (and scarred) daughter who finally decides to come to terms with the son she was forced to part with, Hunt finds just the right blend of inner-anguish and tension breaking asides.

Obviously, the title refers to the situation all of the characters find themselves at. There is also Mark’s fascination with Loggerhead sea turtles, animals that in his mind represent recognition and acceptance in a world where shame is the ultimate destroyer. The shame of giving up a child, the shame of being abandoned, the shame of being gay are, as Kirkman states, “all unnecessarily assigned by our culture in a variety of forms.” This film got to me.

Too bad the gay cowboys rode herd over the box office trampling this superior love story.