There’s a scene in the 1997 film The Edge, written by David Mamet, in which fashion photographer Robert Green, played by Alec Baldwin, is flying over the Alaskan wilderness with billionaire Charles Morse (Anthony Hopkins) in a single engine plane. Shortly before a bird strike downs them into the waters below, the unassuming Morse turns to Green with the simple question: “So, how do you plan on killing me?”
I was reminded of Mamet in watching Kris Avedisian’s debut feature film, Donald Cried, not for the dialogue, but for the projection of masculinity and deceit between the titular character (also played by Avedisian) and returned hometown boy Peter (Jesse Wakeman). They meet again after nearly 20 years when the latter arrives via bus to settle his deceased grandmother’s estate, only to discover that his wallet is gone. Hesitating, Peter sees his high school friend outside of his childhood home across the street and reaches out for help in an awkward conversation that sets the story—which takes place over a period of about 24 hours—in motion.
Donald’s shadow soon spreads itself out like a warm blanket amidst snow-covered suburban Rhode Island, his hair and lifestyle fossilized since adolescence, his lack of a filter and desperate clinging to the past leading to painfully funny remembrances. If he isn’t embarrassing Peter in a diner, reminding his friend’s high school crush of her Homecoming Dance rejection in front of her current husband, he’s telling Peter about the time his grandmother walked in on Donald in flagrante delicto solo before asking, “Did she mention her seeing my penis?”
But the tropes of cringe comedy in this character study—executive produced by Danny McBride, Jody Hill and David Gordon Green—along with the archetype of the manchild or the narrative of the journey back home, are not gutted for simple laughs. Avedisian subverts them while Sam Fleischner’s wide-angle cinematography, juxtaposed against narrow interior shots, depicts the highways, strip malls and modest two-story colonials of Rhode Island as vessels of entrapment. Older model televisions constantly play cage wrestling or weightlifting in the background. Peter claims to be working in finance in Manhattan, yet he takes a Peter Pan bus and can’t get anyone outside of Donald to loan him money. Donald, meanwhile, revels in movie fantasies and has never fully recovered emotionally from an ex tricking him into raising a child, only to abscond with the biological father. Both men kid themselves and each other until it becomes clear to the viewer that despite Donald’s loud proclamations, they are clearly rivals, and that despite Peter’s protestations, he is clearly a willing participant in Donald’s requests.
The title of the film, it should be pointed out, is serendipitous, dating back to Avedisian’s short of the same name in 2012. Despite its focus on un- and underemployed men in post-industrial America, specifically the issues of prescription drug abuse and depression, the movie makes no clear political statement. Instead the viewer watches the masks of crippled emotions and stunted adolescence slowly slip off to reveal past humiliations and shattered self-esteems. Avedisian humanizes the Mediocre White Man by stripping him of any confidence (particularly when faced with an alpha male) and focusing on emotional and economic alienation, the latter given a tangible quality as we are privy to Mediocre White Men’s living and work situations.