Whose Thumb Is It, Anyway?

There is a moment in Richard Matheson's classic horror novel I Am Legend when the world of the book's protagonist, Robert Neville, comes crashing down around him. Throughout the book, Neville, the last human being on a planet now populated by vampires, struggles to restore the world to its normal status. But in the final moments of his life, he realizes that his perception of "normal" is based on concepts, ideals and realities that no longer exist. Neville's entire existence was spent trying to get to a place that can only be called normal. It is a classic theme best exemplified in Matheson's novel but found in everything from episodes of The Twilight Zone and Nip/Tuck to films like Taxi Driver and American Beauty. And now, most recently, the film Thumbsucker.

Justin Cobb, the title character in Thumbsucker, is not that different from I Am Legend's Neville. He, too, is a lost soul who wants so badly to be normal. The only difference between him and Neville-aside from the vampires, of course-is that Justin doesn't even have a concept of what normal is. And the only difference between Thumbsucker and many of the other films in the alienated-weirdo canon is that, in Thumbsucker, everybody is the weirdo.

"One of the themes of the film is 'What's normal behavior?' and this kind of American compulsion to be problemless," writer-director Mike Mills said during a recent Portland visit, two years after he filmed Thumbsucker in Beaverton.

Based on Walter Kirn's novel of the same name, Thumbsucker is the feature film debut of Mills, a multimedium artist known for his work in design and advertising. Inspired by Kirn's tale of a suburban teen who still sucks his thumb, Mills became determined to translate the book to film. For him, the character of Justin Cobb offered a chance to express how he saw his own relationship with the world. "I totally related to that character, so it was just a very cathartic thing for me to get to be that person in fictional form," says Mills. "It gives you license to say more stuff that you might not have in your own life. If you have a mask to wear, sometimes you're more expressive."

Mills' expression-the quest to find normalcy in a world where the concept is defined by the machinations of the media and advertising-is a universal tale that transcends the confines of its generic suburban setting. Like so many others, Justin feels out of place in even the most familiar of settings, often retreating in times of stress to the confines of a stall in the boys' restroom of his high school while sucking his thumb. Or hiding out in his bedroom, again, while sucking his thumb. Or curled up on the couch, sucking his thumb.

Justin's thumbsucking is not so much his problem as it is a problem for the adults around him. For his parents (Tilda Swinton and Vincent D'Onofrio), Justin's oral fixation is a manifestation of their perceived inadequacies-a reminder that they don't really know what they're doing. Not only can Justin's father, Mike, not accept Justin as a thumbsucker, he cannot fully accept his role as a father. Mike even insists that his son call him by his first name, so he won't feel as old. Thumbsucker is ultimately about a teenage boy's search for what it means to be normal-a journey that leads him down a path strewn with Ritalin and marijuana-but it is just as much about the adults around him trying to catch up with growing up.

"The thing that is more intriguing for me as a viewer of Thumbsucker is that it's a coming-of-age film for adults," says Mills. "That's actually the only part of the film that feels subversive to me."

Mills' hazy, sometimes dreamlike world reflects the influences of such filmmakers as Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho) and Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude). Those influences have afforded Mills the tools to show adults who are uncomfortable in their own skin as more than fodder for trite comedy. In Thumbsucker, dysfunction and uncertainty act not as comedic prompts, but as hints at the shadows that lurk around the corners of our adulthood. The monsters and demons that taunt us as children become the unresolved issues we delude ourselves into thinking we've moved past in our 20s, only to begin to grapple with again in our 30s and 40s. Mills calls it "the great dissolving"-a time when you begin to realize how much you really don't know. "Knowing seems more like the hubris of being young," philosophizes the director. "The older you get, the more you're really aware that it's all a big mess."

-which, in another local connection, features Elliott Smith's music-opens Friday, Sept. 30, at Fox Tower.

WWeek 2015