Goat

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This movie definitely is no pleasant entertainment, it slaps you right in the face and belly, it's unsettling and at many points utterly repulsive. Yet it's also fascinating, honest in its meaning (at least so it seemed to me) and very well made and acted. In this story (based on true facts) we follow two brothers to college, the one (Brett) already has a place in a very sought-after fraternity, the other (Brad) is (although reluctant) persuaded by his brother to apply for the same fraternity. For this he needs to partake in a hazing-process together with a group of other applicants. The next hour or so we witness this process. In what is called hell-week they are bullied, stripped, beaten, degraded, exhausted, filled up to nausea with liquor, covered with mud and excrements and urinated upon, one terrifying experience after another. It's appalling to see how far these hazings go and how the board and administration turn a blind eye, evidently for the same reason as the fraternity-brothers year after year repeat these hazings: because it's "tradition". Things deteriorate to the point that one of the group dies, supposedly by heart-failure due to the physical and psychological stress, and that's when Brad throws in the towel, joined and supported by his brother. This movie rests in my opinion on three major pillars: the overwhelming power of social pressure; the relation between the brothers, where in the end their love prevails over that social pressure; and the right to be yourself, even if that is someone who is not as brave as you would hope to be. This is all very convincingly brought by director Andrew Neel, not only with unrelenting realism in the harsh hazing-scenes but also with insight and compassion in the more reflective scenes between the brothers. Ben Schnetzer and Nick Jonas as the brothers are both outstanding. It was a tough ride to see this movie but it was also a very rewarding experience that lingered in my mind for a long time. I rank it a heartfelt 10.

This movie was an official selection at both the Sundance Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival. How it winds up with such a low rating on IMBD and a much higher rating on the competitor's site is and indication of the movies difficult subject. It can be hard to watch, it can be brutal, it can also be beautiful. Male bonding is frequently all of those things. It captivated me and so I recommend it.

I saw this film in the early hours of the morning on British television, without any recommendation to watch it. It was one of the most necessary, and at the same time one of the most brutal films I have ever seen. I do not want to give away spoilers, but the opening credits of half naked men shouting warned me that this was not going to be entertainment, and the opening scenes of a young man being beaten almost to death made me want to turn the film off. I watched it and followed this young man's path to recovery, and along with his brother entering an elite school for further education. Here the real horror began. He had to prove his worth by being 'hazed' which is as I understood it a ritual of various tortures to become 'worthy' of being there. The tortures and the verbal abuse I will not describe, except to say that it was like watching pages of description out of De Sade. The most used of the verbal abuses was anti-gay, along with others used against women. This was the heart, if that is the appropriate word, of the film, along with physical humiliation and torture. Not since Pasolini's 'Salo' have I seen a film like this; another condemnation of human nature that was equally necessary to see and try to understand. The film, as film, is in my opinion equal to Pasolini both for its cinematic merits, and also for daring to go into the lowest depths of humanity. I expected a very violent climax, but instead I saw the young man trying to come to terms with what he has been through. I must just add that there was no disjunction between the opening violence, and the violence in the school. As far as I could see they completed the circle of extreme torture filtering down from the top of society to the most dispossessed in our society. Necessary films are actually quite few, but this in my opinion is one of them. A fully justified 10 for its content, and what it tells us about aspects of human behaviour we would rather turn away from.