Closer is not the Dennis Cooper I remember reading back at university. While the extreme sexual violence is still there, with suggestions of mutilation and masochism, in Closer it simmers beneath the surface, lurks in the shadows. Instead, Closer is a dark, somehow touching, look at the lives of gay youths and the boy they all physically desire, the troubled George Miles.
Closer takes the form of a series of loosely connected chapters, George Miles being the thread that connects them, each from the perspective of a different young man. There is John, an art student, who draws portraits of beautiful people and desecrates their image until they are ugly; who forms a sexual relationship with George. John remains distant while he re-examines his artistic purpose, and cannot draw George’s face accurately. When he finally does, afterwards George tells him of his own issues, and John breaks it off with him. It’s as though the image is what he desires, and the realization that there is something “real” behind that image is too frightening.
He didn’t have time to draw everyone, but being picky meant choosing an artistic goal. John couldn’t. He didn’t know what he was doing. He wound up selecting the best-looking students because they were fun to deface and pretty easy to bullshit. He’d just sort of casually say that maybe he was portraying how tortured they were behind their looks and they’d gasp at his scribbles like they were seeing God or a UFO.
Other characters have a similar relationship trajectory with George, drawn to his flawless facade (which is not described in great detail, allowing us to project, like the characters, an image of impossible, otherworldly beauty), only to abandon him when they discover that he too has fears, feelings and flaws. That is, that he is a person and not an ideal. The chapters from George’s perspective reveal a sad, emotionally disconnected young man, numbing himself against his pain with sex, drugs and a childlike fascination with Disneyland.
Paul, a pathological liar who believes he is a famous, attractive, talentless popstar, spews stream of consciousness rambles about authenticity, performance and love. For him, George is a way to step out of the (imagined) spotlight and find love, separate from adoration. Other characters are also George’s school friends, only one of which is not in love with George himself, but in love with another who is in love with George. Their lives and stories are intricately connected, yet they seem unable to make a lasting connection beyond the image.
Lies are so hard to keep track of. It’s like your constantly being reborn every time you begin a new sentence.
The ending is unsettling, the violence is only suggested so as with George’s beauty, our warped minds are forced to go to the darkest places to imagine these unspeakable acts. It’s confronting and manipulative. The violence is made all the more vicious by everyone’s extreme apathy toward it, no one is horrified, no one is angry, no one is surprised. In amongst the visceral deaths, abuse, and unsightly injuries there is always a glimmer of hope. Not much, but it is there. The possibility of love, of moving beyond the image of the other no matter how beautiful or scarred it may be.