Before he was swinging from trees and fighting mummies, Brendan Fraser was David Greene, a working-class Jewish student just trying to belong. Courtesy of HBO Max.If you don’t go on social media a lot, you may not know that 2022 was the year of “The Brenaissance,” the return of the fabulous, charismatic, most lovable actor in the world: Mr. Brendan Fraser. (And for the record, his surname is not pronounced like “Fraiser” but “Fray-zer.” Just FYI!) Indeed, Fraser stepped out of the limelight for quite a few years and made his unbelievable comeback in The Whale, Darren Aronofsky’s emotionally gripping drama about a morbidly obese man coming to terms with his denouement. It’s a heavy movie, and even though it’s divided a lot of critics, everyone agrees: Fraser is positively REMARKABLE. I don’t want to jinx this year’s Oscars, but if he doesn’t win Best Actor…SO HELP ME GOD.
Anyway, The Whale is currently in theaters, and if you haven’t seen it already, brace yourself for Fraser’s best performance and one of the most daring, extraordinary performances of 2022. Today’s post isn’t about that but a much earlier film of Fraser’s, SCHOOL TIES, a drama that premiered in 1992 and then…well, it sort of disappeared. It received mostly decent reviews and is not at all a bad movie. Perhaps when it came out, audiences weren’t too privy to stories like this, ones that really tackled antisemitism head-on. SCHOOL TIES was way ahead of its time. It’s mostly recognized nowadays as that small movie that starred a bunch of huge Hollywood actors before they were famous, like Matt Damon, Chris O’Donnell, Anthony Rapp, Ben Affleck, and more. For me, I see it as a frightening movie, frightening in the fact that this kind of prejudice it depicts still happens everywhere.
I read somewhere that when film critic Gene Siskel reviewed SCHOOL TIES on Siskel & Ebert, he was triggered by his own memories of the antisemitism he faced at school. I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who can relate to David Greene, Fraser’s character in the movie. David is a friendly, popular, 17-year-old Jewish boy from a working-class town in Scranton, PA in the late 1950s who has been granted a scholarship to a prestigious, Catholic boarding school in Massachusetts. He is used to being treated like dirt for his religion, and it still irks him. He’s a volatile guy, instantly getting into a fight when some low-life insults him for being a Jew in town. His father (Ed Lauter) understands his son’s vexation but pleads with him not to turn violent. His son will always be treated differently because he’s Jewish. David, unfortunately, just has to accept that.
This kind of “reasoning” is more apparent when he arrives at his school, a huge, all-Catholic, all-white boys school where it looks like it’s autumn-weather every day of the year. The leaves blow by. The boys dress the same and are athletic and rambunctious, running across fields and pulling pranks on their teachers. David’s football coach, Coach McDevitt (Kevin Tighe), first warns him upon arrival.
“Don’t tell people any more than they need to know…” he says. So basically, don’t tell any of the boys you’re Jewish because….well, just don’t do it.
That’s the eerie part about SCHOOL TIES, the way these people are so brainwashed to believe these “taboo” rumors about things. If you’re a Jew, you’re a villain. If you’re black, you’re a criminal. If you’re gay, you’re a pervert. THAT’S ALL. No explanations required. People just accept what they hear and learn to live with it. Characters like David’s dad and his coach are good men, but they are flawed in their evasiveness. They don’t want to challenge these norms and have a conversation, either because they think it won’t change anything or they’re just too stubborn. As we know by now, not having these conversations only spurs more prejudice.
David is used to these “precautions,” rolls his eyes, and gets on with his life. He instantly fits in with his fellow peers, including his roommate, Chris (Chris O’Donnell), and Charlie (Matt Damon), a very privileged guy. We’ve all met someone like Charlie in our lives, that person who politely converses and then suddenly says something super offensive without being even remotely aware of how hurtful his words are. At first, he has no beef with David, but there is a subtle jealousy lurking underneath those pre-Good Will Hunting actor’s eyes. In one scene, Charlie sees that David has taken a job serving food in the school’s cafeteria. From across the hall, he smirks. It’s a nefarious sneer, like Charlie is proud that his new classmate, a totally amicable fella, is doing “poor people” work. There’s also the moment where Charlie comments that David dances like a “n-word.” EXCUSE ME?
David’s popularity grows fast, and he is soon the new superstar on the football team. He occasionally hears antisemitic and anti-communist remarks from his peers in the locker room, but he doesn’t react. Just keep quiet, he probably thinks. Things get a little messy when David falls for Sally (Amy Locane), a pretty girl who Charlie likes as well. Charlie’s ultimate payback, and the action of the movie, really sets off when he finds out David’s identity. His ploy of revenge? Disclose this ridiculously not-a-big-deal-at-all news to the classmates.
I have to be sarcastic because this scenario is so sophomoric. It’s infuriating to me, and as much as I want to say, “It’s only a movie,” I can’t. What occurs in SCHOOL TIES has been happening since the beginning of time, and it’s rightfully upsetting to me. I watch movies like this and just want to shout, “WHO CARES THAT HE’S JEWISH?!” WHAT is the big deal? David is a good man who just happens to be Jewish. So what? The characters’ ignorance in SCHOOL TIES mirrors the undying social acceptance of antisemitism in American society.
“Jews are just different,” Chris tells David after finding out his religion. Cringe.
For the guys at this school, there is a set of rules they need to follow. They must assimilate into society by being manly, going to a rich college, and beginning a family (with a woman, of course). Judaism is forbidden merely because it’s what they’ve been taught. They will grow up and hopefully be re-educated the correct way, but we will never know. SCHOOL TIES doesn’t entirely end on a positive level, and it shouldn’t. A person’s antisemitic beliefs don’t just disappear overnight. David knows this and will continue to live in fear because that’s just the way life is.
There is no surprise that Fraser’s career lifted off after this movie. He is a natural at acting, able to take a character and give him careful levels of nuance. David is someone who just wants to be accepted. Violence doesn’t solve anything, but when David lashes out at people, we feel for him. We feel his pain, his fatigue with being told he’s different. In a recent interview with GQ, Fraser reminisced about his performance.
“It’s a film about wanting to belong. Sooner or later, we’ve all felt that we’ve had our nose pressed up against the glass, and we wanted to be a part of what was on the inside, and there was something keeping us out,” he says. “That’s who David Greene was. He was good enough, but he wasn’t accepted because of his fundamental existence.”
I only really grew up with the comedic side of Fraser from his roles in classics like George of the Jungle (1997), The Mummy (1999), Bedazzled (2001), and the criminally underrated Blast from the Past (1999). There is even a hilarious, foreshadowing scene in SCHOOL TIES where he does the Tarzan yell… After watching him in this film and The Whale, I can’t wait to see what he does next. Let “The Brenaissance” continue!
SCHOOL TIES is now available to stream on HBO Max.