Cultures at war in Daniel Patrick Carbone's (three names, never a good sign) debut as director. Manmade culture versus natural culture. Nature is the supple, iridescent sunlight, shimmering through the humid air, streaming through the dense green forest. It is the guileless dog, impetuous, curious, innocent. It is the death that unites us all, despite our differences in life; we will each succumb to it some day, expectedly or not, willingly or not. And it is still there in our youth, in a child's innate compassion and sensitivity, in their curiosity, in their naivety. And it is not age that erodes this natural culture from ourselves, it is that manmade culture which governs, or at least attempts to govern, every detail of the adult human's life, and which said adults use to govern the lives of their children. They bought the gun, built the bridge, made the rules. They call bullshit on the natural truth they don't want to hear. They accept the natural response to tragedy that their culture regards as inappropriate only as exactly that. And the adolescent mind is torn between the two cultures, yielding finally to the pressure of adulthood which they can no longer repress, turning suddenly toxic and cruel in their actions and in their outward character, sacrificing honesty for a dishonest display of strength. Carbone has a canny touch in depicting the lives of young boys in rural America, but he treads no new ground in this feature at all, and, in his self-aware passivity, is too respectful of some of the more discouraging aspects of said lives. He's more concerned with creating a fashionable piece of indie art than expressing anything emotionally or psychologically significant, and so misses opportunities to expand upon his characters. But Hide Your Smiling Faces is a confident and involving film, and the more you think on it, the more rewards you may reap from it.
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