Rebel in the Rye (2017)

Like so many young men when I read Catcher in the Rye it awoke me. I was on the precipice of being the frustrated, angry, confused, and utterly hypocritical Holden Caulfield, paralyzed in my own self-hatred. But his dream, of stopping children from running over the cliff spoke to me and helped me see how I could wake up.

Despite my obsession with the book, which I have reread countless times, this hasn't translated to a fascination with its writer, the reclusive J.D. Salinger. I think I saw him as the failed Caulfield, never escaping that paralization and living his dream. Unlike with other authors I loved, I didn't read his other writings or followed his life. I just wanted to read Catcher and hear what it was saying to me.

So a biographical film about a reclusive man who likely would have hated that there was a movie about him at all seemed like an odd choice. And now after seeing Rebel in the Rye, I'm not sure I felt there really was much of a story there. Perhaps fiction really is richer than reality. Yes we all have our stories that we live day to day, and for J.D. Salinger it is a truth that he lived. Is this approximation of that something that offers us much of value? I'm not sure I have a positive answer to that question.

Like Holden, the J.D. of Rebel in the Rye is smart and privileged and loved and frustrated the hell out of how phony the world is. He is traumatized by romantic rejection and more seriously by his experiencing the horrors of war (although the film is rather short on this aspect of the story). He pours his frustration and fear and trauma into writing. And he produces a masterpiece which isn't always recognized as something. The story feels so generically western white male and doesn't spring off the screen. Kevin Spacey's character, a writing teacher who is influential to J.D. tells him to find his unique voice and not let it overwhelm the story. Here there is very little unique about the voice. And perhaps as an endless parade of mini Holdens show up waiting outside his door with their red hunting caps, we begin to see how blandly ununique the experience is.

Cause for me Catcher in the Rye's brilliance isn't how it captures Holden's angst, but how it condemns his inaction in the face of it, how it gives us moments of beauty, moments or salvation, which he isn't able to succeed in grasping. Rebel in the Rye doesn't appears to be making a martyr case which just didn't fly for me. And while beautifully shot, Rebel in the Rye stumbles through a truncated war experience and into a rushed denouement.

But that isn't what make Rebel less than fulfilling for me. It was that it didn't capture an interesting story. Against the advice of Spacey's character it let its voice overwhelm its story.

Rebel in the Rye
Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Kevin Spacey, Sarah Paulson, Victor Garber, Hope Davis
Writer/Director: Danny Strong