26 Miles

Dennis Lehane

// March 1st, 2010 // Life

I saw Shutter Island today. It was awesome.

Never wanting to spoil freshness of the initial cinematic experience, I try to always forestall any research into the movies I see until after I see them.

Now, for the third time, I realize after-the-fact that this awesome movie I just saw was based on a book by Dennis Lehane.

This guy is good!

The great work by Scorsese and DiCaprio notwithstanding, I confess I’m a little partial to writers.

Mystic River was the first one I saw, and it struck a chord with me. My own family history is punctuated by tests of honor, betrayal, and secrets held close for their own sake. This was a movie like I would want to make.

Next was Gone Baby Gone. A film I rented on a fluke and for which I had decidedly low expectations as it was directed by Jersey Girl scapegoat Ben Affleck. It’s honestly one of my all-time favorite movies. It explores so well many facets of the human psyche, frailty, and fears. It leaves your emotions and prejudices laid bare, grappling with your definition of a happy ending.

His masterful hand consistently paints a stunning picture of the richly-textured, rough, and determined Boston everyman, and the complex realities and strength of his neighborhood-centered ethic.

Another theme in his work is the victimization and abuse of children, sometimes overt, sometimes subtly through the selfish whim and prejudice of authority figures, but always with riveting effect. His storytelling revolves more around abusive relationships than abusive acts, which echoes my own feelings that most child abuse is emotional and psychological, rather than physical, but no less damaging. The children of his stories are forced into quick maturity through the hard realities of their environment, yet innocent and children all the same — sympathetic to the end. You want to hold them in your arms and take them away from the situation. He places you into situations where you know what you would do, but in the shoes of the character the answers are never as clear.

Finally, with Shutter Island, Lehane explores one of my favorite topics — madness.

I believe (though I’m hardly the first) that madness lies within all of us, and that it’s only by chance that ones particular flavor of insanity isn’t revealed.

Dennis Lehane’s work is a testament to this notion. He inserts hurting, damaged people into crises remote from most of our experience, but everyday happenstance in the world of his characters, and you watch who succumbs to their madness and who escapes (though he makes clear that no one ever really escapes).

While I’d argue I don’t revel in observing at arms length the darkness of man, I have learned to love the truth above all, and can take the good with the bad, so long as it’s the raw, unfiltered truth.

Dennis Lehane is a man who isn’t afraid of telling the truth of his characters, no matter how bright or dark — and I LOVE it!

I can’t wait to read his other books.