My Friend Dahmer
Jeffery Dahmer was a bad man, and did horrible, unforgivable things. But he was also troubled, and to a degree not often found in serial murderers, is deserving of some sympathy and compassion. This might come off as an odd thing to say, and I’ll elaborate on it later. It would seem that making a serial murderer truly sympathetic would be impossible, but My Friend Dahmer, a biographical drama about Dahmer in his high school years, attempts – and succeeds – in doing exactly that.
The movie shows Dahmer as a young man, already possessed of odd habits that would be blaring red flags today but weren’t properly understood in the 70s. He has a collection of dead animals he keeps in jars of acid, which his father allows for an absurd amount of time before destroying the bottles and demanding that Dahmer go out and make some friends.
Why Dahmer would keep dead animals in acid jars is a question for forensic psychologists to explain, well outside the realm of any film critic even if he had the pretensions to do so. But within the context of the film, his macabre hobby represents how far along Dahmer’s loneliness had driven him into dark obsessions that were quickly unbalancing his emotional interactions with actual human beings.
Dahmer’s complete lack of social skills and any understanding of how to make and keep friends is soon shown in his behavior at school. He has spasms and acts out, with no clear motivation. Whether he’s tying to be funny, or rebelling in some ill-intentioned way, or is just being self-destructive is never answered. But his spasms draw the attention of another kid, Derf, who slowly befriends Dahmer and invited him into his own group of friends.
The group – now named the Dahmer Fan Club – commit various pranks and hijinks, such as putting Dahmer in the group photos of every club and having him spaz out in various locations. The levity, however, is counterbalanced with the increasing insanity of Dahmer’s mother, which is quite a heartbreaking thing in itself, but also drives Dahmer further into his dark obsessions.
He begins drinking, and by the end of the movie is full-blown alcoholic. He shows up t class utterly drunk, and there’s a few poignant shots of him drinking at school that, if I’m honest, are so depressing someone would have to be heartless not to feel sorry for him. It’s obvious that Dahmer isn’t drinking to make himself happy, or to break inner social inhibitions, but to numb the world around him, a world that he already had difficulty empathizing with.
I’ve dealt with problems with alcohol, and perhaps that’s why I sympathize with him. But I believe the movie is so powerful that it doesn’t rely, as plenty stupid movies do, on shared experience for sympathy but rather portrays Dahmer’s alcoholism so realistically that you have to grabble with it in ways you’re not used to with a serial murderer. It makes Dahmer out to be more damaged and troubled, more pathetic in the true sense of that word, than simply writing him off as either insane or pathological. You’re invited to see him not as a monster, but as someone struggling with dark urges, lost in a world incapable of understanding, much less helping, and spiraling further and further into his own fantasy life.
Eventually, Dahmer’s friendship with the group fades, as Dahmer becomes more captivated with a local doctor he has a crush on. One of his friends begins to question the sincerity and good nature of their relationship with Dahmer, beginning to feel as if they are really mocking him and using his lack of social skills to further their own ends. He starts to see that Dahmer is seriously troubled, and wants the group to just leave him alone. These questions affect Derf’s idea of what Dahmer really is, and although it’s never really clear if Derf liked Dahmer as an equal, or was really just using him, the two drift apart.
The movie also has the balls to portray Dahmer’s necrophilia in an authentic fashion. Necrophiles are lonely, impotent people who are unable to have normal relationships with living people. There are necrophiles who delight in the actual disgusting aspects of death and dead bodies, but others who desire corpses because they cannot interact completely with living people, and are attracted to corpses because they can’t resist, reject, or judge them. It’s Dahmer’s necrophilia, coupled with his alcoholism, that make him so sympathetic.
Serial murderers are, of course, terrible people. I would not be the man to argue that someone like Ted Bundy would be deserving of sympathy in any measure. But Dahmer is different, not a pure psychopath, but rather a man with crippling pathologies and addictions whose loneliness ultimately lead him to desperate acts. It seems inappropriately uncompromising, and cruel, to refuse to sympathize with someone like Dahmer, at least as he’s portrayed in the movie. I’m not suggesting that he should be forgiven, or given mild treatment, merely that a decent degree of compassion would help to understand him better, and might therefore help us understand others like him, who might be able to help.
My Friend Dahmer asks some hard questions and forces you to see some hard things. It’s a departure from the standard serial killer movie, making Dahmer neither a clever, sophisticated killer nor a cynical, brutish fiend. It challenges you to find a reason, among his many problems, to think of him as a human being. Other movies have done this with even more despicable people – Downfall immediately comes to mind. It’s a movie that dares to show a bad man as a young boy, before we can really hate him for his future sins, and dares us in return to see something in him that isn’t monstrous, but sad. Not that over-dramatic, ball-you-eyes-out sad, but that numb, flat sadness we feel when confronted with something we wish we could help, but know we’ll never be able to.
I give it five stars.
Jeffery Dahmer was a bad man, and did horrible, unforgivable things. But he was also troubled, and to a degree not often found in serial murderers, is deserving of some sympathy and compassion. This might come off as an odd thing to say, and I’ll elaborate on it later. It would seem that making a serial murderer truly sympathetic would be impossible, but My Friend Dahmer, a biographical drama about Dahmer in his high school years, attempts – and succeeds – in doing exactly that.
The movie shows Dahmer as a young man, already possessed of odd habits that would be blaring red flags today but weren’t properly understood in the 70s. He has a collection of dead animals he keeps in jars of acid, which his father allows for an absurd amount of time before destroying the bottles and demanding that Dahmer go out and make some friends.
Why Dahmer would keep dead animals in acid jars is a question for forensic psychologists to explain, well outside the realm of any film critic even if he had the pretensions to do so. But within the context of the film, his macabre hobby represents how far along Dahmer’s loneliness had driven him into dark obsessions that were quickly unbalancing his emotional interactions with actual human beings.
Dahmer’s complete lack of social skills and any understanding of how to make and keep friends is soon shown in his behavior at school. He has spasms and acts out, with no clear motivation. Whether he’s tying to be funny, or rebelling in some ill-intentioned way, or is just being self-destructive is never answered. But his spasms draw the attention of another kid, Derf, who slowly befriends Dahmer and invited him into his own group of friends.
The group – now named the Dahmer Fan Club – commit various pranks and hijinks, such as putting Dahmer in the group photos of every club and having him spaz out in various locations. The levity, however, is counterbalanced with the increasing insanity of Dahmer’s mother, which is quite a heartbreaking thing in itself, but also drives Dahmer further into his dark obsessions.
He begins drinking, and by the end of the movie is full-blown alcoholic. He shows up t class utterly drunk, and there’s a few poignant shots of him drinking at school that, if I’m honest, are so depressing someone would have to be heartless not to feel sorry for him. It’s obvious that Dahmer isn’t drinking to make himself happy, or to break inner social inhibitions, but to numb the world around him, a world that he already had difficulty empathizing with.
I’ve dealt with problems with alcohol, and perhaps that’s why I sympathize with him. But I believe the movie is so powerful that it doesn’t rely, as plenty stupid movies do, on shared experience for sympathy but rather portrays Dahmer’s alcoholism so realistically that you have to grabble with it in ways you’re not used to with a serial murderer. It makes Dahmer out to be more damaged and troubled, more pathetic in the true sense of that word, than simply writing him off as either insane or pathological. You’re invited to see him not as a monster, but as someone struggling with dark urges, lost in a world incapable of understanding, much less helping, and spiraling further and further into his own fantasy life.
Eventually, Dahmer’s friendship with the group fades, as Dahmer becomes more captivated with a local doctor he has a crush on. One of his friends begins to question the sincerity and good nature of their relationship with Dahmer, beginning to feel as if they are really mocking him and using his lack of social skills to further their own ends. He starts to see that Dahmer is seriously troubled, and wants the group to just leave him alone. These questions affect Derf’s idea of what Dahmer really is, and although it’s never really clear if Derf liked Dahmer as an equal, or was really just using him, the two drift apart.
The movie also has the balls to portray Dahmer’s necrophilia in an authentic fashion. Necrophiles are lonely, impotent people who are unable to have normal relationships with living people. There are necrophiles who delight in the actual disgusting aspects of death and dead bodies, but others who desire corpses because they cannot interact completely with living people, and are attracted to corpses because they can’t resist, reject, or judge them. It’s Dahmer’s necrophilia, coupled with his alcoholism, that make him so sympathetic.
Serial murderers are, of course, terrible people. I would not be the man to argue that someone like Ted Bundy would be deserving of sympathy in any measure. But Dahmer is different, not a pure psychopath, but rather a man with crippling pathologies and addictions whose loneliness ultimately lead him to desperate acts. It seems inappropriately uncompromising, and cruel, to refuse to sympathize with someone like Dahmer, at least as he’s portrayed in the movie. I’m not suggesting that he should be forgiven, or given mild treatment, merely that a decent degree of compassion would help to understand him better, and might therefore help us understand others like him, who might be able to help.
My Friend Dahmer asks some hard questions and forces you to see some hard things. It’s a departure from the standard serial killer movie, making Dahmer neither a clever, sophisticated killer nor a cynical, brutish fiend. It challenges you to find a reason, among his many problems, to think of him as a human being. Other movies have done this with even more despicable people – Downfall immediately comes to mind. It’s a movie that dares to show a bad man as a young boy, before we can really hate him for his future sins, and dares us in return to see something in him that isn’t monstrous, but sad. Not that over-dramatic, ball-you-eyes-out sad, but that numb, flat sadness we feel when confronted with something we wish we could help, but know we’ll never be able to.
I give it five stars.