When filmmakers squander amazing subject matter, however, it's really a waste. The Brandon Teena Story (1998), directed by Susan Muska and Greta Olafsdottir, is a documentary born of one of the saddest, most bizarre instances of injustice and violence in recent memory. (It was also the basis of the recent feature film Boys Don't Cry.) Brandon Teena may have biologically been created a female, but in words, dress, and actions she was actually the perfect young man. Unfortunately, Brandon's Nebraska neighbors did not encourage these sorts of sexual identity questions. After discovering Brandon's secret, two of her supposed-friends raped her. Brandon tried to get the police involved but faced only accusatory questions insinuating that somehow her own gender confusion had caused the rapes. After being released by the police, the two rapists hunted Brandon down and killed her along with two others. These actions are unimaginably disturbing, all the more so for the total lack of remorse the killers show in their interviews.

The problem with The Brandon Teena Story, however, is not with the subject matter. It's with the approach that the filmmakers take. The film begins with virtually no back-story. Unless you already know what happened (which, thanks to this review, you now do!) you will be left floundering for the first half-hour or so. Virtually no dramatic flow is established. Brandon moves from town to town but the audience never really has a sense of how these regions fit together. For a while the film falls into a pattern of alternating interview segments and Lorrie Morgan-scored driving montages. These musical sequences are basically padding. The images are non sequiturs that add nothing to the film and, in some cases, seem inexplicably random. The maudlin songs may be popular in the area but their sticky-sweet melodies undercut the gravity of the story.

The interviews are another problem. There is no real narrator and the only information comes from talking heads, tv news reports, and muddled courtroom and police audio tapes. To trust a film entirely to the storytelling abilities of those interviewed is a bold move and can pay off with the right subjects: The jazz musicians interviewed in A Great Day in Harlem are so smart and witty that you never once notice that no narrator is filling in the gaps. Sadly, the folk interviewed for The Brandon Teena Story are barely coherent. Whether they are meant to be sympathetic, like the families of the victims, or not, like the killers, these people are unlikable and unintelligible. With a few exceptions, this film paints a grim portrait, at the very least, of the communications skills of Americans. They can barely get out a coherent thought. This criticism isn't meant to imply that the subjects are stupid: They are just being honest. However, the filmmakers, upon viewing these interviews, should have realized that more material would be needed to effectively tell the story. From the murderers on down to Brandon's girlfriends it's hard to believe that any of these people are even aware of what happened on the most basic level. They seem unemotional and uninvolved. The job of helping them express what they feel belonged to the filmmakers.

The paths not taken by the filmmakers are far more fascinating than the details of police procedure. For instance, how did the women that Brandon had intimate relationships with not know that the person they were sleeping with was a woman and not a man? On some level they must have known and, even if they lacked the self-awareness to look within themselves, this is a side of the story that needed to be explored. When Lana, Brandon's final girlfriend, talks about how she felt safe and protected with Brandon the implication is that she had been treated poorly in past relationships. Given the types of men we're introduced to in the area (mostly close-minded, violent criminals) it is unbelievable that filmmakers do not explore this. What conditions led to Lana entering into a relationship with Brandon? How did Brandon's tenderness make Lana feel and what needs did it satisfy? There is no real insight here.

The most haunting sequences are those that feature the audio of Brandon trying to convince the police that she had been violated. These are the only times that Brandon is fleshed out at all and the exasperation one feels hearing her try to steer the conversation away from her own lifestyle and back to what had been done to her is exhausting. The layers of injustice are terrifying and during these moments the story has real punch.

The final twenty minutes of the film, however, betray the original intent entirely. Even though the film initially seems to explore the sexual journey that Brandon began and the violent reaction it provoked, the end focuses solely on the trials of her murderers and how certain the local authorities were that they had the right men. The film never returns to Brandon and ends with a tacked on dedication to the three victims. By that point, however, Brandon's own story has been so barely explored that it doesn't even seem to have been pushed into the background. It was never really up front anyway.

Ultimately that's the worst failure of The Brandon Teena Story: That it doesn't ever really give you a feeling of who Brandon Teena was. Without that, the film has nothing. The filmmakers may have aspired to the stylized darkness of Errol Morris' The Thin Blue Line or the grim grittiness of Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's Brother's Keeper and Paradise Lost, all outstanding documentaries, but they don't have the patience or sophistication. Their approach is totally humorless and, while there is nothing funny about the way her life ended, the fact that Brandon wooed a number of women with sweetness and gifts, sometimes bought with the women's own credit cards, means that she must have been a pretty clever and lively person. There also must have been a deep level of emotion on which Brandon and Lana connected that allowed them to carry on such an unlikely romance. The film never attempts to flesh these people out as anything other than symbols for victims of violence and hatred. The film basically does the same thing that Brandon's detractors did: Reduce her to nothing more than a girl posing as a guy. That is not what she should be remembered for.

PICTURE:
Discussing the picture for this film is nearly pointless. The interviews consist mostly of footage shot on a low-quality video camera and don't look any better than average home movies. The intermediary footage is a mix of video and grainy film. The film footage looks better than the video, but is so random and inexpressive that it doesn't add anything. It only makes the interviews look worse by comparison. Throughout, the full-frame image displays gummy compression artifacts.

AUDIO:
The audio is fine. The interviews are as clear as can be expected given the sources. The audio of Brandon's police interviews is very hard to understand, but on-screen text helps somewhat, even though the font chosen is also tough to decipher. The music is bland Country pop.

EXTRAS:
The only extras included are a few text screens containing filmmaker bios, a "where are they now" sequence, and community resources. The community resources are just web addresses for gay and lesbian organizations and the filmmaker bios are minimal. The updates on the participants in the film are most depressing since, invariably, the answer to the question "where are they now?" is "nowhere."

FINAL THOUGHTS:
It's difficult to recommend The Brandon Teena Story based on its own merits, especially given the availability of Boys Don't Cry, but it is, for all its faults, worth a look for those interested in the subject matter. The audio of Brandon talking to the police is harrowing and the film should be applauded for giving voice to some people who would never otherwise be heard. An extremely compelling and important subject and good intentions, however, cannot help The Brandon Teena Story overcome its shoddy construction.

Gil Jawetz is a graphic designer, video director, and t-shirt designer. He lives in Brooklyn.