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With a career spanning more than three decades and comprised of dozens of acting credits, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has firmly established himself as one of his generation’s most talented performers. After making a splash in front of the camera with appearances in commercials, a handful of supporting roles in feature films, and as a principal cast member of 3rd Rock From the Sun, he took a brief hiatus from entertainment to attend Columbia University in 2000. After returning to the world of acting, he made a conscious effort to seek out meaningful and fulfilling opportunities that would challenge him as a performer.
One such opportunity presented itself in the form of Neil McCormick, one of the two lead characters in Mysterious Skin. Based on Scott Heim‘s 1996 novel of the same name, this drama directed by Gregg Araki marked a turning point in the actor’s career on the big screen. In bringing Neil to life, he eschewed all sense of vanity, ego, and self-consciousness in service of an affecting and emotionally devastating story that sacrifices notions of mainstream entertainment in pursuit of raw authenticity. While the film is far from comfortable viewing, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s full commitment to his performance was crucial in elevating Mysterious Skin from a tale of disturbing subject matter to one of touching sensitivity, signaling to audiences that he was a force to be reckoned with as an actor.
What Is ‘Mysterious Skin’ About?
The film tells the story of Neil and Brian (Brady Corbet), who as children were sexually abused by their little league coach (Bill Sage). Years later, as they’ve grown into teenagers and their respective trauma has evolved, the young men have embarked on starkly different journeys. Neil, whose memories of childhood experiences with the predatory coach are imbued with a misplaced sense of affection and longing, has turned to a life of promiscuity and self-destructive sexual behavior involving older men. Conversely, Brian has largely repressed the memories of what happened with his coach, replacing them with distorted recollections of an encounter that he’s increasingly convinced involved his abduction by aliens.
Much of Mysterious Skin sees Neil and Brian navigating life apart from one another, with the former desiring an escape from his Kansas hometown and the latter living a painfully introverted existence in the company of a helicopter mother and a distant, oblivious father. But what ultimately binds the young men, although they don’t realize it until the film’s final minutes, is a tremendous sense of inner turmoil resulting from shared and unresolved childhood trauma. Their fateful meeting provides them, and audiences alike, with much-needed resolution exposing forgotten truths and inspiring emotional catharsis.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt Ascended to a New Level as an Actor
Watching actors evolve and mature over time is often a fascinating process, particularly those who began performing at such a young age. Having kicked off his career as a child, Joseph Gordon-Levitt essentially aged and developed as an artist in real time before the eyes of millions. After memorable appearances in family-friendly fare like Angels in the Outfield, the teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You, and a several-year stint on a popular sitcom, he’d cultivated a familiar status among viewers as a talented and watchable actor known for playing likable, superficially down-to-earth characters. It’s safe to assume that by the time he returned to acting after attending college, audiences had grown accustomed to perceiving him in a certain performative light. Those expectations would be shattered, however, by his fearless performance in Mysterious Skin.
A Physical Performance That Defied Expectations
In reflecting on the opportunity the film presented for tackling a new kind of challenge, Gordon-Levitt has stated, “It is a really different role for me, and I’ll always be really grateful to Gregg for believing that I could do a role like this.” When Mysterious Skin made its run through the festival circuit in 2004, and 2005, audiences familiar with Gordon-Levitt must’ve been floored by what they saw. Neil McCormick proved to be not only far cry from characters like Tommy Solomon in 3rd Rock and Cameron in 10 Things I Hate About You, but nearly antithetical in terms of personality and presentation. As a tormented man with a tragic history, Neil easily evokes a powerful sense of empathy in viewers, but he’s a much more complex character than Gordon-Levitt had previously been known to play.
Particularly notable is the largely physical and non-verbal nature of his performance. Even when Neil does speak, his words are distorted in a speech pattern aptly characterized by soft-spoken mumbling. As a man of few words, he communicates primarily via body language. Such an aesthetic infuses the performance and character with a level of depth and ambiguity, inviting audiences to collaborate with the material and derive meaning through physical expression. We don’t need Neil to tell us what he’s feeling and thinking, but rather can simply read his expressive face through the “silence is golden” adage as a means of interpretation. Gordon-Levitt’s bold and unconventional approach to playing Neil saw him exploring new territory as an actor that allowed him to flex performative muscle and show audiences he was capable of much more than previously expected.
Fearlessness in the Face of Disturbing Material
To say that Mysterious Skin is a difficult film to watch is an understatement. Diving head first into such uncomfortable and disturbing material, Araki’s film pulls no punches in its depiction of the all-too-real and tragic nature of childhood trauma and the pain that stems from it. The reverence, compassion, and sensitivity he brings to it, along with that of his dedicated cast, makes it an emotionally rewarding viewing experience despite the unpleasant narrative and thematic dynamics at play. Staring such darkness directly in the face surely required a level of artistic integrity and fearlessness that, one may assume, proved a daunting task that some people simply wouldn’t have the backbone for.
Speaking to Indiewire about the unsettling power of his film, and the importance of enlisting courageous actors for its lead roles, Araki has stated that “Neil and Brian respectively… pull you into the story” and “draw you in and sort of lead you through the kind of rougher parts of it.” He adds: “There’s tough stuff in the film but none of it is gratuitous. None of it is there for any sort of shock value. It’s really all about this emotional journey of these two boys.”
Though Corbet’s turn as the naive, innocent Brian is undeniably powerful and affecting, it’s Gordon-Levitt who’s tasked with realizing some of the film’s most harrowing moments. Striving for realism in service of the film’s story and the depiction of narrative beats that could, as Araki noted, border on exploitative, he strikes a delicate balance as Neil. Operating without a safety net, the actor goes for broke and swings for the fences, resulting in one of the most courageous and nuanced performances of his career or any other. His work in Mysterious Skin saw him effectively transition from the more youthful roles he’d previously been associated with, serving as a crucial turning point in his growth as an artist, and offering proof that he’s capable of tackling mature and bold challenges.
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