The film argues that they can see each other more clearly than their class and community might seem to allow. The film contextualizes Brandon and Lana instead of trying to explain their actions. It lets you see how they saw themselves, how they desired themselves into existence. Such questions seem to be in the mass cultural air recently. They're the same ones raised by Spike Lee's Summer of Sam , Sam Mendes' American Beauty , Susan Faludi's Stiffed , David Fincher's Fight Club , Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader's Bringing Out The Dead .
Men feeling betrayed and cheated and desperate make compelling subjects, no doubt.
Don't Cry imagines multiple, unresolvable perspectives. Peirce's movie doesn't produce answers so much as it complicates the process of asking. It doesn't even pretend that it delivers the truth about Brandon Teena. It offers instead a mix of stories, brief glimpses of truth. They shimmer like Brandon against Falls City's deep blue twilight sky, unfixed and seductive.