The Wrong Song

Short mile: Eminem stays close to home.

8 Mile tells Eminem's story, but not as well as his music.

by Elisa Ludwig

If there is raw ambition and desire in 8 Mile, most of it is in the syncopated blasts of “Lose Yourself,” Eminem’s advance-released single from the film’s soundtrack. The movie itself is more concerned with showing us how Rabbit, an aspiring rapper whose character is modeled after Eminem, arrives at a point where the passion starts to brew.

Director Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential) gives us the semi-glossy, semi-gritty life of a clan of young adults in 1995 Detroit -- cruising around to the sounds of Notorious B.I.G., smoking weed and thinking about the hos a record deal could help them score. Rabbit is the group's quietest member, revered for his lyrical skills but mocked for his "hot" mother (Kim Basinger) and his trailer-park home on the proverbial wrong side of 8 Mile Road. Rabbit's mother is also unemployed, emotionally abusive and dates a man from Rabbit's graduating class in high school. The family trailer, to which Rabbit returns after a girlfriend announces she is pregnant, is claustrophobic and clenched with violence.

Frustrated and ambivalent, Rabbit can't seem to find a way to show off his talents, which seem destined to remain in their provenance of paper scraps. His clan of friends (and would-be entourage) try their hardest to convince him otherwise. Mekhi Phifer, with astoundingly phony dreadlocks, plays Future, who hosts a weekly MC battle at a downtown club and urges Rabbit to freestyle.

It's a credit to Eminem that he can play a role close to home and make us forget, if only occasionally, that he is Eminem. Most of the time, Rabbit looks more fragile than angry: The bleached blond hair has been replaced with a buzzcut and his sunken cheeks and small frame give the impression of a mournful vulnerability. (He reportedly lost 20 pounds to play the role.) Even when he gets physically violent, there is a boyish look of fear in Rabbit's eyes.

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Enlivened by Eminem's and Basinger's fine performances, 8 Mile is also stilted by the confines of the Great American Triumph story. Most of Rabbit's friends are painted as types, and Brittany Murphy's character, Alex, an ambitious hanger-on who woos Rabbit, is a case of such awful miscasting that one wishes her whole subplot had been lopped off.

There's also a discomfiting sense that 8 Mile is some kind of apologia for Eminem the pop star. Amid his friends, Rabbit is the center of wisdom and calm. In one scene we find Rabbit rapping about the difference between "faggots" and "gays"; what he objects to is cowardice, not homosexuality. Too often, he is portrayed as an innocent victimized by his mother, by poverty and by his own fear. What Hanson seems to forget is that Eminem is a compelling persona precisely because of his conflicts and contradictions. Wiping them away makes Rabbit less interesting and the film too simplistic.

In the end, it is the too-few battle scenes that make 8 Mile worthwhile. Rabbit's onstage antics have all the self-deprecating humor and wordplay of his real-life prototype. Only here do we understand how an art form can both inspire these characters and provide them with needed escape. But it also raises the deep suspicion that Eminem's life might be best told through his own songs.