Lodge Kerrigan began his succession of utterly unique, visually and aurally dazzling character studies with the raw, ravaging Clean, Shaven. A compelling headfirst dive into the mindscape of a schizophrenic (played by the remarkable Peter Greene) as he tries to track down his daughter after he is released from an institution, Kerrigan’s film brilliantly uses sound and image to lead audiences into a terrifying subjectivity. No one is left unscathed. —The Criterion Collection
Lodge Kerrigan is an Independent Spirit Award winner whose features Clean, Shaven; Claire Dolan; and Keane have been theatrically distributed worldwide and have shown at numerous international festivals including the main competition at Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, New York, Telluride and New Directors/New Films at MoMA, winning numerous prizes. Kerrigan’s work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian’s Hirschhorn Museum, the American Museum of the Moving Image, the annual convention of the American Psychiatric Association, and has been the subject of retrospectives in Torino, Buenos Aires, and Reykjavik. Kerrigan has served on the jury at numerous film festivals, including Rotterdam and Thessaloniki, and he has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. All of Kerrigan’s films, including all future work, have been chosen for preservation by George Eastman House.
Kerrigan is currently developing a documentary… read more
Interesting that the synopsis uses the word "schizophrenic" though the term is never explicitly stated in the film itself. There is a lot of information that's purposely omitted in this story and I wonder if not generalizing Peter's disorder is an example of that device. After all, the ending makes a clear point about not jumping to conclusions and Peter demonstrates behavior consistent with several disorders.
What an unsettling film, Peter Greene gives an outstanding performance as a schizophrenic man looking for his daughter. Found this movie to be disturbing and sometimes hard to watch, makes you feel like your going insane with all the static sounds and noises. It really puts you in the characters shoes and thats what I loved about it.
A visual wonder. Kerrigan succeeds in making us realize just how skewed our view of other’s can be, especially those with mental illness. This is a topic that films usually seem to exploit, making… read review