THE CHOCOLATE WAR
What would your prognosis be for the following movie? It’s an adaptation of a novel that has attracted a substantial cult of adolescent readers, written and directed by a young actor best known for playing nerds in Christine and Dressed to Kill, produced, on a shoestring, by a lawyer-agent (who happens to be married to Sally Kellerman), and featuring a company of little-known artists both before and behind the camera. When completed, this production was exhibited theatrically only in Los Angeles and just a few weeks ahead of its scheduled release on videocassette.
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Gordon’s film is densely plotted–the press-kit synopsis consumes six pages–and, unlike the majority of current Hollywood “high concept” projects, it’s concerned with complex moral issues. The setting is Saint Trinity, a Catholic boys’ prep school. (The school’s location is unspecified, but the topography and grayish light of Seattle are unmistakable.) Jerry Renault, a freshman whose mother has recently succumbed to cancer, is selected for a special “assignment” by Archie, a sadistic upperclassman and official of the Vigils, a student secret society that terrorizes the school.
Jerry’s friend Goober tries to persuade him to “play the game,” but Jerry staunchly refuses. The Vigils also “assign” him to accept his quota of candy, and threaten punishment if he disobeys. But Jerry persists in his rebellion despite harassment from the Vigils; rumors are spread about his sexuality, his locker is smeared with shit, and he is roughed up on his way home by Emile, a vicious classmate. To save face for the Vigils, Archie arranges a revenge boxing match between Jerry and Emile, selling raffle tickets to subsidize Jerry’s unsold chocolates. At the end of the fight, everybody loses–Jerry, Archie, Leon, and the student body.
Although sometimes heavy-handed and stylistically a bit ragged at the edges, The Chocolate War poses some thorny questions about the nature of authority and refuses to cop out by offering viewers easy, reassuring answers. The film is especially insightful about the way power structures–social, religious, political–reinforce one another, despite conflicting values and goals, to squelch individualism.
