If you are looking for Afterschool Specials for American heterosexual cis men, then Reinaldo Marcus Green’s sophomore feature film, “Joe Bell,” is perfect for you. Lonesome Dove’s Larry McMurtry’s final collaboration with Diana Ossana—they wrote “Brokeback Mountain” (2005) together—is based on true story. The titular character (Mark Wahlberg) walks from Oregon to New York preaching tolerance to honor his son, Jadin (Reid Miller), after Jadin comes out as gay and faces brutal bullying in high school. Joe must come to terms with whether he undermined or supported Jadin.
If you have Google, don’t use it until after you finish “Joe Bell” otherwise you will spoil all the twists in the movie. While the story is innately moving, if you are already familiar with the story, knowledge will detract from any momentum and tension. If the movie is faithful to McMurtry and Ossana’s narrative structure, then it needed a few more revisions before the story got committed to film. The story toggles from the present to the past until the timelines converge and move forward together. We see the story from several characters’ perspectives. There is also some magical realism sprinkled throughout the tale, but unlike Guillermo del Toro’s films, the fantasy elements are indistinguishable from reality. Green fails to convey a rhythm in the film while visually interpreting their words.
If “Joe Bell” committed an unforgiveable sin, it was prioritizing Joe’s story over Jadin’s when Jadin’s story is more compelling. It makes cynical marketing sense to privilege the heterosexual character whom more viewers can relate to starring the actor who normally does blockbusters than the homosexual character whom a lesser-known actor plays regardless of whether Miller is a better actor than Wahlberg.
I would have loved a chronological, wistful story about Jadin, especially considering the mythology surrounding our traditional ideas of high school cheerleader. In a better world, Jadin would just end up making the team, dishing with his friends and dating a football player with the bigoted world on the edges incrementally taking center stage until the crescendo in the locker room, which was terrifying to watch, especially since the threat of sexual violence seems around the corner though thankfully, small mercies, it never happens. The most powerful scene in the entire film is when Jadin reaches out to his friend, an ally, who falls short because of her mom’s choices and superficial support. Instead the film pulls a classic narcissistic move and centers the parent by hijacking the spotlight from the child while simultaneously critiquing it. It is reminiscent of when there could not be black or minority protagonists, but movies cast a white man as the protagonist witnessing other people’s history, which mirrored our legal process. A minority’s story is validated if a white man can testify it as if the white man is objective and not as subjective as anyone else.
“Joe Bell” acknowledges this problem and leans into it.
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The titular character appears to be on a walking road trip with Jadin, but Jadin committed suicide, and Joe is only imagining how they would have interacted if he had created space for Jadin instead of brushing him off. I consider it a spoiler that Jadin died, but it was a high-profile case, and reasonable minds differ. I was unfamiliar with the story. I have seen “Joe Bell” a couple of times now. Maybe I am dense, but when they first appear together, they are shot as if they are two separate walkers on the same highway who keep each other company. It took me awhile to realize that they were together, and father and son.
I did not know that Jadin was dead, but I guessed it early. What I never knew was that during his walk, a truck killed Joe. In the opening scene, we see Joe walking alone on the highway. Green uses the audio to make it seem as if a truck almost brushed Joe. Shortly before that moment, we see Jadin on the other side of the highway. I am convinced that Green had a different vision for the story, and if my theory is correct, I think that Green’s vision would have been just as tropey, but better and more effective. I believe that Green wanted the film to always depict Joe as dead. Then it makes sense to make Joe the protagonist as he grapples with his many regrets in how he lived his life, and the film’s trajectory is about Joe reuniting with Jadin.
Instead this reunion is only depicted in the final scene. The movie is divided into three parts. The first act is Joe and imaginary Jadin. The second act is Joe without imaginary Jadin, and the viewers realizing that Joe is making the same mistakes with his surviving family that he made with Jadin, which is the movie’s admission of the flaws in their choice of protagonist. He is an unreliable narrator not because of his imagination, but because he does not understand himself. He can only have strong imaginary relationships because of this inability and his instinctual need to deflect self-condemnation into anger directed at others for falling short of his ideals. The final act is a reconciliation with Jadin in his imagination then in death. Without Jadin, the film draws some uncomfortable and provocative parallels between Jadin and Joe. Both think that they are standing up for something, but the film implies that Joe could be as suicidal as Jadin and were unable to stand against the hurricane of hate. For all of Joe’s bluster, he falls back when faced with the least resistance. They have similar heartbreaking phone calls where they reach out to someone to feel less alone. Also Joseph Bell (Maxwell Jenkins) is the only member of the family who discerns the cracks in their strong facades, and after Jadin, I would have loved a story about Joseph. How is he doing? I’m holding space for you, Joseph.
If I did not know that Green is black, I would never guess that he was. He relies on mainstream American culture without ever arching a metaphorical eyebrow. While conversations rail against the church’s homophobia, the church is never depicted in that way, and at one town, the local pastor gathers a crowd for Joe. When a kind sheriff (Forrest Gump’s Gary Sinise) befriends Joe, there is an Obama Biden sign in the background. No Jordan Peele “I would have voted for Obama a third term if I could” winks. Green is earnest and inoffensive instead of questioning. I know that Green’s father died shortly before the film was released so he possibly related to the story in a way that made him embrace Joe and not question what lies behind the majestic landscapes more than I could as the film unfolded.
I am really curious whether the real-life Joe imagined himself with Jadin or had similar issues to the fictional version. I started out liking Wahlberg’s depiction because I related to him. Don’t tell me anything when I’m trying to watch television. I also liked how he wanted his kid to kick his bullies’ asses until he wanted Jadin to put his light under a bushel.
