Butler's Cinema Scene

Jake Gyllenhaal

“STRONGER” My rating: A- 

116 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Stronger” is the story of Jeff Bauman, who lost both legs in the Boston Marathon bombing. The subject matter alone is enough to give potential moviegoers pause.

Is this going to be a weepy? A jingoistic flag-waver? Is it gonna be, oh God, inspirational?

There are plenty of arguments for steering clear of “Stronger.”  Ignore them.

For in adapting Bauman’s memoir writer John Pollen and director David Gordon Green have given us what may be the year’s most potent drama, a masterful blend of personal narrative and social observation.

It’s a film about despair, resilience, family and romance.  Yes, it’s deeply emotional, but less in a crassly manipulative Hollywood way than in the sense that it nails so many truths about the human condition.

You’ll cry.  In fact, anyone who can sit through “Stronger” without tearing up at least three times had best stop wasting their money on movie tickets and start saving for a bass boat.

But it’s a cleansing cry, not an exploitative one.

In the film’s first 10 minutes we’re introduced to Jeff (Jake Gyllenhaal, quite possibly Oscar bound), a “chicken roaster at Costco” and a classic example of blue-collar Boston. He’s a drinker and a sports idiot, traits he shares with his boisterous, brawling, low-credit-score uncles and cousins. He’s kind of unreliable, which is why his girl Erin (“Orphan Black’s” Tatiana Maslany) has broken up with him yet again.

Jeff decides he can win back Erin by passing on  a Sox game to cheer her on as she runs the Boston Marathon. He’s at the finish line holding a hand-made congratulatory sign when the bomb goes off.

Almost immediately director Green demonstrates how to ease into an uncomfortable issue with grace and taste.  We don’t see the immediate bloody results of the blast.  But we’re with Erin in a bar when the TV news shows a photo of the seriously wounded Jeff being carried away by a man in a cowboy hat. (We won’t actually see a re-enactment of the event until flashbacks in the movie’s third act.)

Tatiana Maslany, Jake Gyllenhaal

“Stronger” follows Jeff through weeks at the hospital, painful rehab, and a slow learning curve in dealing with his prosthetic limbs.  But the physical stuff is nothing compared to the emotional/mental.

Clearly Jeff has PTSD.  He can be belligerant and combative even with those who try to help him. For his part in helping kill and capture the bombers — shortly after awakening he was giving FBI agents descriptions of the culprits — Jeff becomes a celebrity, the poster boy for the “Boston Strong” movement. There are times when he’s just as soon sink into the woodwork.

Throughout Erin is by his side, sometimes bearing the brunt of his frustrations. And she has to deal with Jeff’s alcoholic and smothering mother, Patty (Miranda Richardson, spectacular).

All this may make “Stronger” seem like a pretty grim experience. But it doesn’t play that way. For one thing, the film is frequently very funny in its almost documentary depiction of Jeff’s family (I was reminded of David O. Russell’s “The Fighter”).

And Jeff is himself possessor of a biting sense of humor. Told he has lost both legs, he immediately identifies himself as “Lt. Dan,” a reference to the legless character in “Forrest Gump.”

Gyllenhaal, who makes the ballsiest choices of any young leading man in the movies, superbly depicts an average Joe caught up in overwhelming circumstances; Maslany is quietly devastating as the faithful — up to a point — Erin.

Green, whose resume ranges from indie masterworks like “Prince Avalanche” to mainstream stoner comedies like “Your Highness,” may have hit his high water mark with “Stronger.”  It may just be a new American classic.

| Robert W. Butler