Head On
by Ana Kokkinos
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alex Dimitriades, Elena Mandalis, Julian Garner, Paul Capsis, Tony NikolakopoulosDirector: Ana Kokkinos
Cinematographer: Jaems Grant
Writer: Ana Kokkinos
Editor: Jill Bilcock
Producer: Jane Scott
Writer: Andrew Bovell
Writer: Christos Tsiolkas
Writer: Mira Robertson
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; Greek (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Color, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 104 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-10-31
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Strand Releasing
Movie Reviews of Head On
Movie Review: A Self-Martyring Satyr, A Rebel Without A Pause
Summary: 5 Stars
Ana Kokkinos' honest and very perceptive Head On (1998) is an extraordinary reworking of Rebel Without A Cause (1955), the landmark Nicholas Ray-James Dean film which galvanized a generation and changed American youth culture forever.
Head On records roughly twenty four hours in the life of Ari, a nineteen-year old homosexually-inclined Australian living with his claustrophobically traditional Greek family in Melbourne. Emotionally sensitive but restless, driven, and discontented, Ari, who spontaneously sees through all of society's compromises, has become a relentless sensation junkie, living moment to moment as if forced to walk barefoot through an endless bed of burning coals. Though his father was once something of a radical and a revolutionary, Ari perceives that his father's efforts have been largely wasted, since the father's present life is an endless angry round of drunkenness, mawkish sentimentality about the past, and knee-jerk dedication to all forms of Greek tradition.
As the film unfolds, the brooding Ari strikes out in every direction and in all directions at once, searching for his own freedom and a single thing in life to make it bearable. On the day in question, Ari brings himself to orgasm, has two bitter physical confrontations with his father, injects and snorts amphetamines repeatedly, sells drugs to his friends, carelessly seduces his younger sister's female friend, verbally harasses foreigners, insults liberals, makes a series of mocking passes at his best friend's fiance, belittles his friend's announcement of marital engagement as opportunistic, engages in frantic sexual intercourse with strange men in alleyways on two separate occasions, denies his transvestite friend Johnny when approached by him in a cafe, attacks his sister's boyfriend in a fit of incestuous jealousy, is arrested for possession of hashish and subsequently beaten by the police who he foolishly mocks, and is thrown naked into a hallway after he violently releases his building frustrations on the young man who he has half-heartedly been pursuing throughout the course of the film. In the final scene, the still isolated Ari makes a kind of peace with life, declaring, "I will not make a difference...no one will remember me when I'm dead. I'm a sailor and a whore and I will be until the end of the world," words Jean Genet might have appreciated.
The greatness of Head On lies in the fact that the film is completely without apologies for itself or for Ari; he is not a victim but a kinetic hero, and Kokkinos shrewdly bypasses all forms of social welfare propaganda and other kinds of theoretical excuses to frame and thus buffer her protagonist. Ari is neither immoral or amoral, neither a leader nor a follower; as a young man awakening to the hard truths of existence and refusing the false comforts of hypocrisy, conformity, illusion, denial, and repression as viable alternatives, Ari, who is tender and protective to those he loves, will die as he has lived, a master of his own fate to the best of his ability.
Head On is not essentially a "gay film," despite Ari's homosexual drive and activity. Ari never uses the words "gay" or "homosexual" to define himself, and throughout the film the question of his sexual nature remains prismatic in the eyes and on the lips of his friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers he encounters. Neither of his parents perceive his homosexuality, though, in a tense scene, his aunt literally divines it while predicting his fortune in the grounds of his coffee. His close friends broadly accept who he is, while people on the periphery of his life laugh ambiguously whenever he turns his back. Head On is so assured of itself that it probably would have worked just as perfectly without the homosexual element. But Ari's provocative sexuality is the element that underscores and defines his liminal, "betwixt and between" status and marginality.
Graceful, beguiling, and effortlessly seductive, Ari is superbly portrayed by Alex Dimitriades, who gives the kind of genuinely riveting, entirely unselfconscious performance that most Western actors today can only dream about-and are probably incapable of delivering. Never less than fully present, daring, vital, and alive in every pore, Dimitriades casts a long and definite shadow across the screen; several dialogue-free scenes are wholly engrossing simply because Dimitriades' face and body movements register not only a broad range of emotional nuance, but simultaneously express the complex and tightly knit internal and external conflicts that Ari continually confronts and is confronted by. Dimitriades is the rare actor who performs just as handsomely without dialogue as with.
Most conspicuously, Dimitriades is a authentically virile male, something rarely allowed to be seen center stage in Western cinema since the advent of the 'Sensitive Man' in the early 1970s; the loss of such public representations of undiluted masculinity has been both culturally and socially disastrous. Thus, it is unsurprising that Dimitriades has not subsequently become another bland, diluted, and emasculated corporate Hollywood Golden Boy.
Dimitriades, who resembles a combination of the young Bruce Springsteen and Ben Affleck, is in fact everything that Affleck attempts to be and is not. Dimitriades' strong, imperfect nose, which has a conspicuous ball on its end, only adds to the power of his haunted face. In Head On, Dimitriades has the kind of muscular but lush, rounded physique which appeals overtly and covertly to both women and men of all backgrounds and preferences. Throughout the film, whether simply standing, observing, dancing, or running, Dimitriades is continuously sending out a charged series of explosive erotic signals. Happily, there is no hint of smirking irony in Dimitriades' interpretation of his character.
Kokkinos has created a highly original, complex film which completely fulfills itself. Unlike most Hollywood product today, Head On constitutes an actual cinematic experience, one which is simultaneously challenging, educational, stimulating, and satisfying.
Summary of Head On
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