Goats

Reminiscent of works which only appear to have a story arc – the spectacular failure of Away We Go comes to mind – and of white, upper-middle class meaninglessness, Goats actually avoids the Sword of Damocles which dangles over such works and their vacuousness. How narrow the aversion is subject to debate.

In these “angsty” films, we have the illusion of change. In effect, the change that takes place is merely frame-by-frame, as if the chess game has already been played and we as players are inattentive to the unfolding fatalism. Typically these are industrial bins of emotional waste. In other words, not much happens beyond emotional foreplay and an amalgam of screenplay onanism.

In Goats, however, while it certainly shares the hollowness of other works, it does not dwell on melancholy. In fact, it is self-aware of its blackness, which provides a therapeutic to the cancerous blight that can be interpreted in a story about a 14 year old who no one loves, except by a stoned goat-breeding vagabond who serendipitously setup his pot plants in the backyard which the two shared.

I suppose it is quite poetic then. And indeed, it is touching that, were the protagonist to seriously reflect on his life, the fact he is emotionally stable and competent enough to excel at his boarding school is miraculous. His roommate, who shares the typically portrayed apathetic upbringing of an “abandoned” boarding child, is often a wreck, and at one point an alcoholic – at the age of 14.

David Duchovny plays the titular “Goat-man”, and does a spectacular job, extracting a passive emotional warmth in the Tuscon desert. Indeed, the success of this film is in the coherency and the depth of each of the chess pieces. While already established that we are merely observing a sample of one boy’s life, that sample is accentuated by a strong supporting cast.

And it is the supporting cast which makes the efforts of these films successful. Juno, which I would classify as a superior alternative as the story arc entailed a classic drama, fulfills this quota, while also puncturing the tale with humorous jabs. There is no room for meditation in that frenzy, as there is with the methodic pacing in Goats. Yet Goats does not end in a moribund manner, with the emotional spew of the cast creating a flux of disconnect. There can be no resolution in a film where nothing happens; yet we do see whatever it will be dangling above the dry Arizona sky.

Grade: B-