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Apt Pupil
Directed by Bryan Singer; Starring: Ian McKellen, Brad Renfro.
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The stomach does a little flip, the skin on the back of the hands gets itchy, and then there's a tightening in the head: getting creeped-out is always enjoyable. From Frankenstein to Alien, the fun of getting scared comes out of the feeling of being threatened or even disoriented. That is why Apt Pupil is such an odd experience. It has plenty of the usual scares 'n' thrills and even tries to challenge us, but ends up just dismaying.

Based on a novella by Stephen King, Apt Pupil aims at being a California gothic-- the dark, frightening, and dire underside of a bright and sunny world. The script by Brandon Boyce has energy and thrust, but even with its extraordinarily well-calculated shocking moments, it lacks the emotional cohesion that would give it real power. Part of this is because it attempts to bring together two themes-- the Holocaust and homoeroticism-- in such a way that it seems alternately smart and edgy, or superficial and morally hallow. The film's tag line is "If you don't believe in the existence of evil you have a lot to learn"-- well, yes, but maybe not from this film.

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Todd Bowden (Brad Renfro) is a typical all American high-school boy. Top of his class, star of the baseball team, popular in school-- Todd seems to have everything until he becomes obsessed with the Holocaust and discovers that Kurt Dussander (Ian McKellen), the nice German man down the block, is really a wanted Nazi war criminal who was the head of several death camps during the war. Like any serious student, Todd makes Kurt is next project-- and gains the man's cooperation by threatening to turn him in. Todd's "project" is to find out what it felt like to have a bloody hand in the Nazi genocide. Needless to say, this all happens with complications.

As Todd becomes more and more controlling of Kurt's life-- he buys him a Gestapo uniform and makes him march around the house-- he also falls under the thrall of Kurt's history. At a turning point in the story, Kurt turns the tables and begins to blackmail Todd into dropping his original threat and then (under some very serious dramatic tension) helps him cover up a murder that Kurt commits in attempting to protect his past. Apt Pupil presents us with a daring duo of Nazi obsessives and appears to be posing hard questions-- has Todd learned to be evil from Nazi Kurt? Is Kurt (because of, or maybe in spite of his Nazi past) a victim of Todd's desire to "know" how Nazis really feel? What is the nature of Kurt's "evil"? What is the impulse behind's Todd's quest for knowing this?

Obviously this isn't the first time that the Holocaust has been used in Hollywood to highlight the presence or nature of evil. Ira Levin's tawdry The Boys of Brazil-- made into a third-rate thriller with Gregory Peck and Lawrence Olivier-- did the same thing, as did schlock-fests like Hitler's Brain Lives. But Apt Pupil has more on its mind than simply exploring these large questions. While the Nazi-thriller stuff here is routine, the film's pervasive, ever-present homoeroticism is not. There are repeated shots of comely Brad Renfro's body that seem to be there simply for audience appreciation. There is a shower scene with lots of nude boys (and which oddly and creepily turns into a homoerotic death-camp shower scene). There are clear sexual overtones when Todd dresses Kurt up in fetish-inspired Nazi uniform and orders him to march around in an SM-flavored scene. During their fights, both Todd and Kurt talking about "fucking" one another. There are definite sexual vibes and discussions when Kurt invites a homeless man (Elias Koteas) home with him-- although Kurt has other plans for him. (And why is the homeless man dressed in complete disco glitter? I know this is California, but still.) And what does it mean that Todd can't get a hard-on when his girlfriend is blowing him? And when he accuses guidance councilor Edward French (David Schwimmer) of coming on to him is he doing it for simple blackmail? Or is it true? Or a projection?

By simply presenting these images and ideas, director Bryan Singer complicates Apt Pupil far more than most other Holocaust thrillers. But to what end? Sure the homoerotic images are great to look at, but do they have any real meaning? By sexualizing-- specifically homoeroticizing-- the Holocaust, Singer opens some scary doors. Unfortunately he doesn't seem to find much behind them of any interest. You could make up endless "reasons" why this is all happening: perhaps Todd, say, is a repressed homosexual and has channeled his desire into large-scale SM fantasies. Or maybe Kurt (who is single) relates to Todd as a son or lover or master? Or maybe there is some theme here about sex and power and whatever. But that's the very problem-- in the end it all begins to feel like, well, whatever. And on top of it all, Singer never even begins to explain why Todd is so obsessed with the Holocaust.

Surely fictional films have the right-- even the necessity-- to ambiguity and nuance (that is what makes the best of them art). But Apt Pupil is so confused and confusing that it annoys and ultimately trivializes its subject matter: the Holocaust reduced to a muddled metaphor. Overlaying sex and homoeroticism to the Holocaust ups the ante, and you had better deliver, as films like Visconte's The Damned and Calvani's The Night Porter both manage to do. So does the 1986 In a Glass Cage, directed by Agustin Villaronga, which shows a Nazi boy-killer in an iron lung being tortured by a former camp inmate. Glass Cage pushes audiences and makes us relate in a whole new way to its material. But that is why In a Glass Cage works and Apt Pupil doesn't.

In the end Apt Pupil-- for all of its flash and really scary moments-- doesn't have much on its mind-- at least much that it's able to communicate.

Connecting white-teen-boy homoeroticism to Nazism is shocking, but maybe a little predictable. In her classic study of the Eichmann trials, Hannah Arendt describes the proceedings and the criminal as embodying "the banality of evil." Sitting through close to two hours of Apt Pupil and coming up in the end with nothing more than enjoying Ian McKellen chew up the scenery and Brad Renfro flashing his tits and his butt, one is tempted to remember Arendt and go home to contemplate the evil of banality.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com