Life on the inside is a favourite film topic. From The Birdman of Alcatraz to the more recent Shawshank Redemption, audiences have been fascinated by prison dramas. Animal Factory is another, and this one – directed and co-starring Steve Buscemi – tries to be both traditional and unconventional at the same time.
Ron Decker ( Edward Furlong), a young drug pusher, is put in prison where he meets Earl Copen ( Willem Dafoe), a hardened inmate who controls a powerful criminal clique. Being young and impressionable, Decker soon makes friends and hardens with the rest. The jailhouse politics are easily apparent. Anyone who threatens Decker or the other members of the gang must answer to Earl; after all, it’s ‘his’ prison.
Animal Factory is an apt title for this film. When Decker goes in, he’s modestly innocent with all the naiveté of an adolescent. By the end of the movie, he’s as much an ‘animal’ as the other inmates. Prison isn’t an easy environment and there are times when you either go down fighting or just go down. What we learn is that in prison, it’s difficult to avoid becoming part of one crowd or another. If you find the right crowd, then your emotional survival is nearly assured, but your innocence still won’t be safe and without help, you can end up isolated.
This film shows that love is as necessary as any emotion, even when it’s not convenient or tolerable. Many of the men in prison are merely searching for a way to ease their sexual frustration. Others are searching for that one person who will fill the emotional gap that only love can fill.
Earl falls for Decker, but must rationalize his feelings or lose him, but Decker can’t return the emotion, having been conditioned by society not to. As with the theme of survival and change, prison breaks societal taboos and Earl must reconcile his emotions and decide whether to push forward or let things happen naturally.
Furlong’s performance in a challenging role isn’t entirely satisfying. His character becomes too tough too quickly, and his range of emotion is too limited for the role. Alternatively, Dafoe plays his character perfectly. One of the great unsung actors, he not only has the right physical demeanour for his character, but he also carries its emotion. The biggest surprise, however, is Mickey Rourke who plays Decker’s cross-dressing cellmate Jan.
If anything, Animal Factory doesn’t go as far as it should. Dafoe is terrific, but his understated emotions call for stronger direction to pull them out. Fried Green Tomatoes is another film touching on homosexuality that was criticized for being too subtle on this theme and not providing enough definition to its homosexual undercurrent.
Here we see prison as we’ve seen it before, but with a touch of originality. The introduction of a love theme in an all-male environment is both unusual and difficult for some audiences to accept. Unfortunately, Animal Factory isn’t honest enough with itself to be truly fulfilling.
