By the time I saw Boys Don't Cry, Hilary Swank's performance had already been rewarded with an Oscar nomination, and in fact was only a week away from winning. The film had opened on Oct. 8, 1999 (10 years ago this week), but only in limited release, playing on no more than 50 screens nationwide until February 2000, when its theater count jumped to 118 in conjunction with the announcement of the Oscar nominations. Now, finally, people could see the performance they'd been hearing so much about, and I sat in a packed theater one Saturday afternoon to witness it for myself.

When you've already heard a lot of buzz about a film, it's hard to know how significant that is in your appraisal of it. Would I have thought Swank's performance was fantastic if I hadn't been conditioned to think that by the months of praise and the Oscar nomination? Most sensible people try to divorce themselves from preconceived notions before seeing a movie, if only because they've learned the hard way about expecting too much. (Helpful hint: If you expect it to be the most awesome thing you've ever seen, it won't be.) But it's hard to do that completely, no matter how much you try.

Until last week, I hadn't seen Boys Don't Cry since that first viewing almost a decade ago. (It's not the sort of movie you watch just for fun.) Any bias I might have felt in Swank's favor had long since dissipated; this viewing was fresh. So I was surprised, in re-watching the film, by how powerful I found Swank's performance to be, and how worthy of the Academy Award. The word "brave" is thrown around a lot when discussing some actors, but Swank's portrayal of Teena Brandon, a 21-year-old woman with a self-diagnosed "sexual identity crisis" who dresses and lives life as a man, is genuinely brave. It meant exposing herself, physically and emotionally, to the camera, and letting the whole world see her at her most vulnerable. I know actors are well compensated for their troubles, but it still takes courage to open yourself up as much as Swank does in this film.

In my review, I didn't give Swank enough credit. I said her performance was "mesmerizing and bold, and deserving of the attention she has received" -- see, I can't even avoid mentioning the buzz -- but also that she made Teena "a sympathetic, if not entirely fleshed-out, character." At the time, I wanted to see more backstory about Teena, about what made her pass herself off as Brandon, about her psychological needs and troubles.

I also wrote this:

It would seem, in fact, that the movie is often spinning its wheels, just waiting to get to the grand finale. And why? Most viewers already know what happens, as it's a true story and the film's promoters have made no secret of it. [For the uninitiated: After learning that "Brandon" is actually a woman, two men rape her and eventually kill her.] So the shock is in the graphic details we're shown, not in the acts themselves. John and Tom are never made to seem anything more than imbecilic and ridiculous, so their crazed actions do not add anything to their characters, nor do they provoke thought.... Basically, we're already appalled at what happened to Teena Brandon when we walk into the theater, and seeing it enacted doesn't really intensify that.

On repeat viewing, I see that I missed the mark on both of these issues. The film isn't "spinning its wheels" in leading up to the attack. What it's doing is answering the other criticism I made: it's revealing Brandon's psychology to us. Knowing as we do that things are going to end badly -- and it would be apparent from the film's tone even if we didn't -- it's heartbreaking to watch Brandon's desperate and naive behavior leading up to the finale. He (I'll use the pronoun Teena Brandon preferred) wants only to love and be loved, to the point that he ignores the obstacles that stand in his way. The woman he's fallen in love with, Lana (Chloë Sevigny), will not be pleased to learn that he's actually a woman. Brandon knows that this discovery is inevitable. Yet Brandon plunges forward anyway because he is blinded by love and has conditioned himself to ignore reality. Why? Because to face reality would be to accept that he might never find the kind of love he's looking for, and that possibility is too dire to contemplate. Clinging to a fantasy is preferable.

I wrote at the time that I was shocked by how graphically the attacks are depicted in the film. Watching it again, I was saddened to realize that, 10 years later, the scene doesn't seem as graphic as it used to. Director Kimberly Peirce was required by the MPAA to tone down some of the footage to avoid an NC-17 rating, yet the resulting R-rated cut is considerably less appalling than what we've seen in some other R-rated films since then. Moreover, the violence in Boys Don't Cry is intended to be harrowing and cautionary -- unlike the violence in, say, Hostel or the Saw films, which is supposed to be entertaining and titillating. Yet Peirce's film is threatened with an NC-17 and the torture-for-laffs crowd skates by with an R.

Boys Don't Cry

1999 Eric says: Boys Don't Cry ... is a powerful film if only for the remarkable performance by Hilary Swank as Teena and for the harrowing final 30 minutes.... Swank's impersonation of a man is truly disorienting.... For several long stretches of the film, I forgot entirely that Brandon was being played by a female actor, so convincing, both physically and verbally, is Swank's performance.... It would seem ... that the movie is often spinning its wheels, just waiting to get to the grand finale. Swank, however, makes the most of what she is given to work with, making Brandon a sympathetic, if not entirely fleshed-out, character. Her performance is mesmerizing and bold. Grade: B+

2009 Eric says: With her sharp jawline and pointy chin, the 25-year-old Hilary Swank passes remarkably well for a somewhat effete teenage boy, but it's her performance -- a woman playing a woman pretending to be a man -- that really sells it. The character's sweetly naive desperation and ongoing web of lies are heartbreaking, as is the doomed love affair between her and Chloë Sevigny (whose performance is also compelling). A haunting and sad film. Grade: A-

* * * *

Eric's Ten-Year Itch runs on occasional Mondays, in rotation with Eric's Time Capsule. You can visit Eric at his website, where boys do cry, all the time, like babies.

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