MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Loneliness’ a Childhood Idyll With Black Edges

In movies shot from childhood’s perspective, the film makers can give their images a conscious shine, a sense of rough wonder. That’s what happens in the modestly made, often lovely “The Wizard of Loneliness,” (Westwood Plaza). Director Jenny Bowen gives us a childhood idyll with black edges. As in “My Life as a Dog,” we see everything from the wide-eyed viewpoint of a young boy, separated from his parents, forced to live in a distant, small town environment. And, as in “Hope and Glory,” we get a child’s vision of the World War II home front.

John Nichols’ semi-autobiographical novel, published in 1966 in the midst of the Vietnam War, painted the outside world as a place of threat, humiliation, pain. It’s 1944: Your mother dies, your father disappears into the Army, your schoolmates attack you, adults misunderstand or menace you. And death is in the air. Yet, in retrospect everything assumes the dreamy nimbus of nostalgia.

The film’s 12-year-old protagonist-narrator, Wendall Oler (Lukas Haas), is a defiantly rude young California outsider who rejects the affable approaches of his new Vermont family, dreams of destructive wizardry. Wendall has an alter-ego, the psychotic young Army deserter Duffy (Dylan Baker), a town golden boy turned fugitive, whom he first encounters on the arriving train. Duffy, the ex-lover of Wendall’s young aunt Sybil (Lea Thompson), is a wild-eyed doppleganger who carries isolation to its most destructive extreme. He is the real wizard of loneliness.

The movie is about different kinds of alienation: the artist’s and the outlaw’s, the child’s and the lunatic’s. But there’s something alienating about the framework.

Director Bowen, her superb cinematographer-husband Richard, production designer Jeffrey Beecroft and costume designer Stephanie Maslansky have performed miracles of period re-creation and visualization. Superficially, the film becomes a halcyon vision of a “simpler” time, a time recalled so lovingly that it resembles a dustless museum exhibit, or one of those tiny, intricate designs carved within an ivory eggshell.

It’s also a Norman Rockwell vision that masks the turbulence and sexual frustration of a drama by Tennessee Williams or William Inge: Americana in a Gothic vein. Nichols has been unsparingly unsentimental to his surrogate. But, despite Wendall’s obnoxious behavior--gradually eroded by his kindly relatives--the Bowens light and frame him lustrously, like a little Raphaelite cherub.

And, in the end, Lukas Haas’ demeanor--the gently direct gaze, delicate bespectacled features and air of diffidence undercutting the abrasiveness--somehow seems too perfect. So does the movie’s design, the rhythm of the acting. Baker’s Duffy begins with a scene of bravura, careful menace, but, later on, his psychotic fugues take on a weird, clumsy quality. And his final scene is badly, unconvincingly staged.

Yet “The Wizard of Loneliness” (MPAA-rated PG-13, for sexual situations) is the sort of film where you can forgive errors in strategy and tone. It has one unforgettable performance: 4-year-old amateur Jeremiah Warner, as Tom, Wendall’s cousin-roommate, has remarkable instinctive ability; he shows all the quirky spontaneity and glowing, fresh surprise the rest of the movie often lacks. And there are moments of beauty or fine reverie throughout: the sturdy, instinctive generosity of John Randolph’s patriarchal Doc; the afternoon light in a small town ‘40s drugstore; the way the seasons seep into each other. Bowen and her collaborators, working with affection and decency, make us a gift of this time and place.

‘THE WIZARD OF LONELINESS’

A Skouras Pictures Inc. release. Producers Philip Porcella, Thom Tyson. Director Jenny Bowen. Executive producer Lindsay Law. Script Nancy Larson. Additional written material by Bowen. Camera Richard Bowen. Production design Jeffrey Beecroft. Music Michel Colombier. Editor Lisa Day. With Lukas Haas, Lea Thompson, John Randolph, Anne Pitoniak, Dylan Baker, Lance Guest, Jeremiah Warner.

Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

MPAA rating: PG-13 (parents are strongly cautioned; some material may be inappropriate for children under 13).