DAHMER
Directed by: David Jacobson.
Produced by: Larry Rattner.
Written by: Jacobson.
Director of Photography: Chris Manley.
Edited by: Bipasha Shom.
Music by: Christina Agamanolis, Marianna Bernoski & Willow Williamson.
Released by: First Look.
Country of Origin: USA. 101 min. Rated: R.
With: Jeremy Renner, Bruce Davison & Artel Kayàru.

DVD Features: Scene Selection. Spanish subtitles. Commentary by Jacobson & Kayàru. Featurette. Trailer. Full Screen.

Instead of blood-and-guts violence and edge-of-your-seat suspense, Dahmer mixes the mundane with the unexpected in a successful effort to humanize serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (Renner). Dahmer, for instance, cares for his pet fish. In another scene, he weeps after his first kill. And, for the most part, the film merely explores–not answers–how an awkward gay teenager turned into a murderer. In doing so, writer-director Jacobson examines interesting issues of race and sexuality. Two white policemen ignore the warnings of two suspicious black women and instead trust Dahmer. In another scene, Dahmer tells his pick-up, a young black man (Kayàru) “You’re pissed at every one because you’re gay. Everyone laughs at you, shits on you. And you’re black, so it’s worse–the bottom of the bottom.” Renner delivers his lines with subtlety and is the glue that holds this film together, even when other performances waver.

The DVD offers Spanish subtitles, but something’s lost in the translation. In one scene, Dahmer’s father says, “Let’s go to church,” a line most likely intended to be darkly ironic. The translation: “Let’s go.” And I found the featurette rather pedantic: I enjoy trying to figure out the film’s many visual metaphors on my own, without too much help from the commentators. Both the featurette and the commentary reveal that marketers can sometimes do the right thing. Apparently Jacobson’s pretentious subtitle, The Mind is a Place of Its Own (that’s Dante, in case you didn’t know) was wisely cut by the editor’s pen.

Steven Cordova, poet, whose chapbook, Slow Dissolve, is forthcoming from Momotombo Press in fall 2003
May 22, 2003