“Skin,” an unblinkingly brutal drama opening Friday in theaters and On Demand, asks a lot of its audience — to suspend its disgust for the protagonist on the road to personal redemption.
The independent feature stars British actor Jamie Bell as real-life former neo-Nazi Bryon Widner, an Indiana thug who wore his hate proudly … literally tattooed on his face. When Bryon has a monumental change of heart, his old friends aren’t open to his transformation and he realizes that his past will never fully fade.
“I’m not forcing anyone to forgive Bryon. There’s no full redemption. It’s almost like being an ex-alcoholic. You always have those demons inside of you,” said “Skin” writer/director Guy Nattiv. “Bryon is still fighting those demons. It isn’t perfect.”
True-life redemption tales have won their share of kudos of late. “Green Book,” the 2018 film about a bigoted Italian-American driver who befriends a black pianist on a tour of the Deep South, took home the Academy Award for best picture in February. This year’s “The Best of Enemies,” about the rivalry between a Ku Klux Klan leader and a black civil rights activist in North Carolina, has garnered a 77% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
But those stories also have detractors. Salon.com dubbed “Green Book” a “lazy, feel-good take on race”; the Daily Beast slammed “Enemies” as “KKK rehab” that is “all kinds of wrong.”
Mr. Nattiv hopes those who cried foul over those films will give “Skin” a chance.
“Do you have a place in your heart to accept someone who used to be a monster and wants to be human again?” he said. “If someone says no, that’s fine. I want to evoke the question. Maybe in five years we’ll have more place in heart to change.”
Award-winning crime novelist Andrew Klavan suggests that those who bristle at the redemptive arcs in films like “Skin” and “Green Book” have some ideology in common. The bulk of “Green Book” critics, for example, hail from the left.
Conservatism says people can govern themselves with limited government interference, said Mr. Klavan, who co-wrote the screenplay for a 2018 biopic about convicted abortionist Kermit Gosnell. Liberals, by comparison, think the state is required to “eradicate human evil,” he adds.
“In the ’50s, America confronted the evil of racism and eradicated it from its government … not from the human heart. That will never happen … but from its institutions,” said Mr. Klavan, who hosts an eponymous, right-leaning podcast for The Daily Wire. “So to tell a story of racial healing is to tell the true story of America and to reveal leftism as the unnecessary power grab that it is. It is to say, ’Yes, people can govern themselves.’ … Leftists can never accept that.”
Mr. Nattiv won the Oscar best live-action short film this year for “Skin,” a similarly themed tale of racial bigotry but with a different storyline. Both “Skin” the short and the feature film showcase Australian actress Danielle Macdonald. The rising star portrays the woman who helps steer Mr. Bell’s character to a better future.
The short film helped make the full-length “Skin” a reality, even though they tell two different stories connected by hate. American producers weren’t eager to fund a feature about a neo-Nazi shedding his vile skin, Mr. Nattiv said. The short helped persuade Hollywood to give Mr. Nattiv’s vision a chance.
“I needed to tell this story,” he said of Bryon Widner’s journey.
That trek began with Mr. Nattiv reaching out to Mr. Widner via Facebook. Two months later, he got a response.
Mr. Widner endured 25 painful surgeries to shed his face of its bigoted veneer.
“Skin” producer Oren Moverman, director of 2014’s Brian Wilson biopic “Love & Mercy,” suggested Mr. Bell as someone who could bring the former skinhead to life on the big screen. Probably best known for his breakout debut in 2000’s “Billy Elliot,” Mr. Bell most recently portrayed songwriter Bernie Taupin in this year’s Elton John biographical fantasy “Rocketman” and the stoic Ben Grimm/The Thing in 2015’s superhero adventure “Fantastic Four.”
The director met with Mr. Bell and recognized his potential.
“I didn’t want the cliched character of this buff man [with] no sense of intelligence in him. Bryon Widner is an intelligent, soulful guy trapped in this brainwashed character he had,” Mr. Nattiv said. “When I met Jamie … I saw this soulful guy who can be a monster [on screen].”
A frightening aspect of “Skin” is how the neo-Nazis attract recruits. That job in the film falls to the group’s unofficial den mother, played by Vera Farmiga. She helps the group embrace young adults from shattered homes and give them a sense of community.
“You make them feel like they have a family. Then you tag them like a cow on a farm and teach them, inject poison into their minds,” Mr. Nattiv said.
“Skin” seems like an unlikely choice to compete with summer fare like “The Lion King” and “Spider-Man: Far From Home.” For Mr. Nattiv, working on a “Skin” follow-up focusing on Daryle Lamont Jenkins, the black activist who helps people like Mr. Widner denounce hate, the redemptive arc matters most of all. It’s a story that matters on a local and global scale.
Mr. Nattiv, who is Jewish, recalls the 1979 Israel-Egyptian peace treaty, a document once thought impossible to secure.
“They had the vision to make peace … for the children and the next generation,” he said.
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