Eyal Resh | Boys / 2016

afraid of the dark

by Douglas Messerli

 

Eyal Resh (screenwriter and director) Boys / 2016 [15 minutes]

 

In Eyal Resh’s Boys (2016) absolutely nothing happens; everything happens. The two 12 or 13-year-old friends, living just a few blocks apart, play in the sprinkler system with a young girl, and when she goes home continue their play, escalating into minor rough-housing.                  

     When called in to get ready for dinner, Jake (Pearce Joza) asks if his friend Brian (Wyatt Griswold) might stay over for the night. Permission is quickly given, and Brian runs back home to pack up a toothbrush, etc. and returns.

     The two make prank telephone calls, wrestle a bit, count their growing underarm hairs—the dark-haired Jake definitely has more than the redheaded Brian—and continue in their meaningless conversations until Jake’s mother enters, ordering them to be quieter and go to sleep.

     They lay in the dark for a while, Brian finally getting up a nerve to tell his friend that he is afraid of the dark. Jakes puts his hand on his friend’s chest and lets it lay there for a long while.

    Brian eventually sits up and straddles Jake, leaning over somewhat close to his face as if debating whether to kiss his friend or not, but certainly allowing their midsections to touch and even moving in a slow rhythm, that might be described as frotting, for a significant amount of time, but finally coming to a stop.

     He turns back to his side of the bed, soon reporting “Jake, I have to go home.”

     He attempts to call his parents to expect him, but gets no answer.      

    Jake does not try to stop him, and merely pulls the cover over his head, inwardly realizing what has happened but pretending that he wants to know nothing about it.

     Brian gets his backpack and sneaks out of the house, not wanting to be questioned by adults.

     He begins slowly walking the few blocks home, but as he reaches the last part of the trip, he shifts into a run.

     You might say that that evening is the first of a long series of realizations that will plague him through puberty into adulthood about his sexuality. He has enjoyed the almost nonexistent sexual contact with his friend, and he has comprehended, more importantly, that he does enjoy it, that he has initiated the contact and will want to again and again. He has no choice but to proceed next time or again run.

     And so, we realize, Brian has begun in a series of engagements and escapes that will exhaust him until he can accept what he has come to realize that night as being something from which he no longer needs to run.

     How can he possibly explain that to his parents, to his friend, to anyone else? It is a matter to deal with in the dark, that as he has stated, terrorizes him.

 

Los Angeles, March 20, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2022).