An unflinching look at two 'Country Boys' defined by poverty and tragedy in Appalachia
Tim Goodman
Monday, January 9, 2006
Cody (left) and Chris, hard-knock kids featured in a PBS ...
Country Boys: Documentary, 9 tonight, Tuesday and Wednesday, PBS.
There are moments in David Sutherland's extraordinary portrait of two boys living poor and against the odds in rural America when you think it can't get any bleaker. But it almost always does.
And yet, in "Country Boys," spread over three nights and six hours on PBS, there is hope in the hopelessness, unabashed nakedness in the fly-on-the-wall documentary style and, finally, confirmation that we may all have a hand in our own fate.
Sutherland, whose moving and intimate portrait, "The Farmer's Wife," gripped PBS viewers in 1998, returns with another "Frontline" documentary, a too-close-for-comfort view of two lives, this time unfolding in eastern Kentucky's Appalachian hills. The filmmaker, who calls himself a portraitist (there's no overt point of view in Sutherland's work; he gets close, stays close for lengthy periods and then lets it unfold), found two 15-year-old boys, Chris Johnson and Cody Perkins, and followed them for three years as they attended a modern alternative high school tucked into the lush hills of David, Ky.
Both boys have personal tragedies that are immense and clearly have taken an emotional toll, yet each kid allowed Sutherland unlimited access during a highly emotional coming-of-age period in their lives.
Chris, who gives "Country Boys" its most painfully honest moments, is locked in a cycle of repeating failure. He lives in a run-down trailer with his mother, Sheila, a bedraggled, droopy-eyed woman who dropped out of high school, had three kids and supports them by cleaning hotel rooms. She also supports -- and fights with -- her husband, Randall, an alcoholic who's so far gone when you first see him that you know immediately he can't do anything but drink. He certainly can't parent, or contribute -- yet Chris desperately wants his approval.
Chris was diagnosed with a learning disability that allows his family to receive a monthly Social Security check if he stays in school, something that proves extremely hard to do. In deep poverty, Chris acknowledges early on that his family lives for that check, but not so much for him.
Cody, on the other hand, is slightly more affluent and his living situation more stable, but his life is twisted by tragedy. His mother killed herself when he was a baby and his father ended up marrying seven times, the last time to a stripper whom he eventually killed onstage with a machine gun before turning it on himself. Cody, then 12, bounced around with family members before declaring he wanted to live with Liz, his step-grandmother (her daughter was wife No. 4 and Liz had a real fondness for Cody).
When you see Cody for the first time in "Country Boys," you think he'll never make it. He looks goth, with a penchant for speed-metal music, painted fingernails, long hair and a slow speech pattern where he barely emphasizes any words -- a mumble and drone that sounds lost under sleepy eyes and pimply skin. What separates him from some Columbine-kid caricature is the fact he's found God and wears it proudly on his T-shirts and shouts it in his Christian metal band.
Where Chris has no filter between his heart and his mouth, Cody chooses his words more wisely, and each night you begin to see his smarts emerge. But ultimately it's Chris who is the gold nugget that Sutherland has unearthed in Appalachia. Here's a kid who essentially raised himself and is now supporting his family. He's socially awkward but battles through his fears to express himself in ever-more emotionally raw, wince-inducing ways. There's a lot of bluster in Chris, a lot of drama, too. But the teachers at the David School, where they try to work miracles with a campus full of kids just like this, realize his potential immediately. But Chris has never had parental guidance and he is -- repeatedly and painfully -- his own worst enemy.
The beauty of Sutherland's work is precisely the portraitist approach he espouses. The camera rolls through all manner of private, awkward, raw moments that would otherwise go unseen but for the people in the room. There is no narration in "Country Boys" other than voice-overs from the participants. The story is advanced through their unvarnished thoughts, their outspoken hopes and dreams, their depressed moods and bare worries.
Without a distinct point of view, Sutherland allows you to forge your own opinion about the two boys, their families and their plight -- and undoubtedly those opinions will vary depending on where you reside in these 50 states, your social status and your economic class.
It would be hard to watch "Country Boys" and not count your blessings, that much is certain. Nor is it easy to avoid the creeping sense of bleakness, of fatalism, of knowing that these two boys are growing up and heading into the world on some kind of preordained path. Sutherland gets lucky in that there's a twinned sense of hope and despair at work here with Chris and Cody -- you can see the arc of their lives and sit powerless to change either one.
But there are also serious problems with "Country Boys." It moves at a glacial pace -- which is part of Sutherland's style -- but that doesn't make it easy to withstand six hours over three nights, particularly when Chris snatches defeat from the jaws of victory so often. Also, even though the documentary was filmed over three years and attempts to cover most of the moments that make an impression on these kids, Sutherland either doesn't bother to follow-up with certain storylines or can't fit them into the already-long film. It leaves a number of questions unanswered. There's no real sense of time -- you can only guess by the seasonal changes or when the boys' features change and they mention time in their voice-overs.
But these shortcomings do not detract from the overall impact. You may not know exactly what moment you're in with "Country Boys," but you can always be thankful that it's not your life.
E-mail Tim Goodman at
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