Roger Avary's "Mr. Stitch"

A Commentary by Linda S. Barth

In the blinding white light of a stark and empty room, a new being opens its eyes for the first time. It moans a painful sound too hoarse to be a scream, and then slowly quiets to the whistled lilt of "The Birthday Song," a horrifyingly quirky lullaby for the newly born creation. This child of the past and the future is called "Subject Three" (Wil Wheaton), the result of a bizarre yet literately traditional experiment conducted by scientist Dr. Rue Wakeman (Rutger Hauer). And in waking this new life, the doctor will never truly realize how very much he should rue and regret his actions, instead leaving those truths to be suffered by eighty-eight innocent half-dead victims and another who will choose death over the fractured mosaic of his half-life existence.

Roger Avary's "Mr. Stitch" is an eerie film filled with unsettling images and sounds, colored with shadings of dark humor, and held together by its compelling exploration of the often painful, circuitous route we all take to find self-awareness and understanding. Is every person born the proverbial tabula rasa, shaped and defined by what is written on that blank slate of being by each tangible experience? Or are we created by what we remember of those sensory occurrences; is the interpretation of a sight or sound or touch more "true" than the substantial moment itself?

While clearly taking its inspiration from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - or the Modern Prometheus, Avary's "Mr. Stitch" focuses far more on the emotional construct and development of this brave, new man than on the physical, and, in doing so, gives the traditional story a very intriguing new twist. "Subject Three" is a laboratory-generated entity, human in appearance but designed to fulfill an inhuman fate. Impressively designed make-up illustrates his physical creation from the flesh and bones of eighty-eight men, women, and children of various races and ages. This patchwork appearance serves as an inescapable visual embodiment of the complex memories, emotions, and nightmare visions swirling and pulsing within his psyche. So many voices in one small room, and which are real?

Early in Subject Three's life, he is given a Rohrshach test by Dr. Wakeman. In the dark forms, Subject Three first sees "chaos, entrapment, fear, death" and then "flying, freedom, release." Still heavily bandaged, he weaves his way through Dr. Wakeman's maze of scientific books stacked on the glossy white floor of the birthing room that has become his home. Through reading, he strengthens his mind, just as hours of physical exercise have strengthened his body, but he longs for something more. Finally, by physical force, he obtains the right to choose his own name, to be free of constant observation, to read fiction (especially The Bible and Frankenstein), and to look into a mirror. His demands are met and his wishes are fulfilled; yet ultimately they only lead back to the images he has already seen - chaos, entrapment, and fear and death, flying, freedom, and release.

From The Bible, Subject Three selects for his name "Lazarus." Both amused and subtly apprehensive, Dr. Wakeman comments, "I wonder if that makes me Jesus." To which the new Lazarus replies, "Not unless you were to die for my sins." In retrospect, this is a very poignant moment in the film, for we are to learn that Lazarus has no true sins, nor freedom, of his own. His life is not vastly magnified with promise for both good and evil; it is microscopic in its focus and inevitable in its fate. When he removes the bandages to reveal Lazarus for the first time, Dr. Wakeman proclaims, "You're an improvement on nature; you are all men and women; you comprise humanity." And indeed Lazarus does, for he is only human.

The possibility of vision is a theme Roger Avary uses brilliantly throughout the film, effectively employing several inescapable images. The bed in which Lazarus dreams of others' nightmares is shaped like a great, encompassing eye. A huge, grossly humanesque eye serves as a monitor to follow Lazarus throughout his day until he destroys that particular vehicle of vision in his raging desire for a modicum of freedom and privacy. From the eye-shaped doorframe with its sliding lens-like panels to Lazarus' dual-colored eyes staring out through the holes in his heavily bandaged face, we are constantly made aware of the variations vision can take on. Through Lazarus, Avary reminds us that vision can reveal truth and lies, clarity and distortions, memories and dreams or nightmares. Yet it is up to each of us to discover which are the visions we can trust.

As the film progresses, we learn that the surreal environment that gave birth to Lazarus is a government-funded facility. Lazarus was to become the ultimate killing machine, focused only on destruction under the direction of the military. But something goes wrong with those plans and instead Lazarus becomes something very different. His destructive tendencies are tempered by his terror at the remembered horrors of the violent deaths his hosts had suffered at the hands of Dr. Wakeman's minions, and by his own growing capacity to love. In synthesizing the beliefs and memories of his hosts, Lazarus comes to develop thoughts, opinions, and morals of his own, and he can no longer be controlled. The experiment has gone horribly wrong, or perhaps inevitably right.

Throughout the film, Roger Avary's talents in writing and direction establish a very cohesive atmosphere of ensemble playing. While Wil Wheaton's Lazarus is, of course, the focal point for the film, the supporting characters have clearly defined and vital roles to play. We see them as important individuals, yet they mesh effectively with one another in providing a framework for our discovery of Lazarus's identity and place in the world. They literally and figuratively bring Lazarus to life.

Through therapeutic sessions with psychiatrist Dr. Elizabeth English (Nia Peeples), Lazarus learns that construction of his brain was made possible by Dr. Frederick Texarian (Ron Perlman), who was also Elizabeth's lover. Dr. English is the first person to encourage a sense of social equality with Lazarus, encouraging him to ask questions in order to discover and understand the truth. She tells Lazarus that he was composed equally of men and women with the intention to create a balance, but in response Lazarus tries to explain that there is no balance within him. His dreams are wildly fluctuating images of freedom and destruction; he believes the dreams of freedom are his, while the nightmares of death are residue thoughts from the others, seeping out to devour him each night in that twilight moment between sleep and awakening. He cannot escape memories which are not his own and yet are an irrevocable part of him.

As he tries to explain this state of being to Elizabeth, he suddenly pauses and then proclaims quietly, "If you believe it in your heart, then follow it. Otherwise, don't be so eager to concur with the opinions of others." As viewers we see overt images of what Lazarus sees from within as he repeats the words of Dr. Texarian, the man who created his brain. Elizabeth immediately recognizes the words and sees in them proof that Lazarus's theory of his clashing memories and struggle for free will is the truth.

While Wil Wheaton's remarkable and touching performance as Lazarus takes place almost entirely in a strange, surrealistic world of sterile white rooms and organic machines, Ron Perlman's brief but key performance as Dr. Texarian is played out largely in a world we all can recognize. Mr. Avary employs these contrasting images beautifully to enhance our understanding of just how isolated and bizarre Lazarus's life will always be. Despite his involvement in the military lab, Dr. Texarian's world is filled with sunny days and starry nights, a place where work is pursued with dedication, and where love is found and shared. In a place of madness spiraling out of control, Mr. Perlman's Dr. Texarian often maintains a seamless stretch of rationality. In his few scenes, we see him as a visionary researcher who discovers his knowledge is being used for purposes he hadn't intended; as a passionate scientist whose growing relationship with Elizabeth allows him to be a passionate man as well; and finally as something of an avenging angel who tries to make things right, yet fails, and in time, hands to Lazarus the illusory light of wings and sword.

It is, of course, always a pleasure to see Mr. Perlman in a film, even when his role is as brief as this one. It is to his credit that he makes his few appearances very memorable, and it is a credit to Roger Avary's talents as well for writing certain essential scenes that Mr. Perlman interprets and performs so well. In one of the key scenes that define Lazarus's existence, which we see through the shared memories of the two men, Dr. Texarian is identifying various constellations as he and Elizabeth lie on a blanket beneath the starry sky. When she comments upon the stars' stability, he gently corrects her, telling her that, "Stars are born and then they die; (they are) shifting and changing." He compares this constant rearrangement to the reinterpretation of information and knowledge as time progresses from age to age throughout history, stating that everything shifts and rearranges in the mind of the individual.

Again, what is truth? And how do we find a balance amid the chaos?

While at one time he might have asked the questions, Dr. Wakeman never understood the knowledge Dr. Texarian possessed. With a patchwork psyche of universal knowledge and individual beliefs, Lazarus was not an empty vessel who could be filled with data and programmed to perform. In the end he was everyone and no one, unable to find that balance and a voice of his own amidst the clamor of so many others.

In a scene with Dr. English, Lazarus seems to be overpowered by yet another being who is controlling him/them "from the darkness beyond." This image and plot line are never explored further, but it seemed to me that the "new" voice might have been the possibility of being that Lazarus was doomed never to know - a true individuality that was beyond his reach by virtue of who and what he was.

Mr. Avary's film culminates in Lazarus's physical break for freedom, involving a long car chase and a great deal of violence. While it was necessary to allow Lazarus an opportunity to play out the end of his existence in the outside world and to find some purpose in it, several minutes of this part of the film are not as compelling and intriguing as other scenes. That the extended car chase (with, to its credits, a few oddly humorous bits reminiscent of Rutger Hauer's early scenes), stands out as uneven and not quite successful, actually underscores the film's greater merits, but it is a disappointment to the viewer whose expectations had been raised and met until then.

Prior to his escape, Lazarus remembers Dr. Texarian's growing horror at the direction the project has taken, including the moment when he told Elizabeth of his fears and his determination to keep the insanity from continuing. After overpowering his guards, Lazarus makes his way through the site, soon stumbling across the lab where "Subject Four," the new and improved killing machine, is growing. His body parts are strung about the room, their pulsing, bleeding flesh the only color in the whiteness, and his head has been placed on a table, its brain connected by wires and its mouth trying desperately to utter words no one will ever hear.

The scene is very reminiscent of that in "Alien Resurrection" when Ripley discovers the several prototypes that proceeded her own development and rebirth. How horrifying it must be to be confronted by things so hideous and horrifying and to know they are parts of yourself. Like Frankenstein's monster striking back against the repulsion and terror he invokes in others, and, therefore, in himself, Lazarus and Ripley destroy their brother and sisters, but they cannot destroy those same qualities in themselves. Products of nature and nurture, we all must find a way to live with things within ourselves we'd rather not possess, certain "gifts" we can never return.

Finally emerging into a world of jarring sound and color and movement, Lazarus confronts his fate. He knows that he has no true, individual self, no matter how hard he might have tried to create one. He cannot ignore his pasts, realizing that all his lives will never leave him, that they do not "haunt" him but instead he "haunts" them. In a very touching scene, Lazarus seeks out a woman who was wife to one of his hosts and mother to another, using their memories to let her know she is still loved from beyond the grave. He finishes out those two lives that were ended in unexpected violence and resurrected within him. He knows now that there is no place for him in the "real" world; in saying good-bye for the others, he is saying good-bye for himself.

Compelled to live out another belief possessed by Dr. Texarian - and, therefore, by him - a belief in the individual's freedom of will, Lazarus chooses to return to the place of his birth. It was Dr. Texarian's desire to end the experiment and destroy what was to be the perfect weapon in order to make the world safe, at least for a little while longer. To that end, Lazarus goes home to end that particular madness and to find peace in his own destruction. He can never be what he longs to be. In living out the memories and fragmented lives of others, he is only a shattered reflection of all of them, fulfilling their needs and echoing their emotions and expectations. For just a moment he knew freedom, the possibility of being, the chance to see the truth of his own "face,"only to realize he must sacrifice any chance to obtain that knowledge in order to stop Dr. Wakeman's mad path of destruction.

On Roger Avary's website, there is an uncredited quotation: "We never learn as much or as fast as we do when our minds are virginal and first become aware. And when we confront ourselves emotionally we stand at an abyss so black that what we see is our own face staring back at us." All Lazarus ever really wanted was the chance to stand at that abyss. Knowing that true self-awareness never was his makes Lazarus more human than anything else in his complex, doomed life.

"Mr. Stitch" is available on video, and I would recommend you give this intriguing and unusual film a try. It is one of Roger Avary's earlier works, and I'm looking forward to seeing what he does in the future. Clearly he is not afraid to explore complex ideas and to experiment with their interpretation, letting the audience come to its own conclusions rather than spoon-feeding his opinions to them. If for nothing else, that factor alone makes it worth your time to see this film, but, of course, the fact that you're reading this article at all most likely makes you a Ron Perlman fan and gives you another reason to rent "Mr. Stitch." I hope our extremely talented favorite actor and this highly creative, thought-provoking, and ingenious writer/director will work together again. Their combined efforts are bound to be impressive and well worth watching!
Linda Barth, 1998.

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