The fact that I thoroughly enjoyed Mean Creek (2004) renews my fleeting hope that perhaps I am deep, at least in the way that liking Sundance films makes you deep. It’s kind of like enjoying freeform jazz, or understanding Deuteronomy, or preferring the second Darren in Bewitched. It puts me in rare company, and that makes me deep. Since I like things nobody else does, I must be special. It’s sort of a shallow kind of deep, come to think of it.

(Note here that I’m writing about a film called “Mean Creek,” and using a deep / shallow analogy… pretty cool eh? You know… creek… deep… shallow… get it? Maybe I am deep after all.)

I enjoyed Mean Creek first because it made me react. I reacted the same way I did while watching Meet the Parents (2000). And I mean that in a good way. When a character makes a bad plan, such as trying to replace a lost cat with a look-alike, and I know it’s going to end badly, I tend to get anxious. I shake my head and think, “no, don’t do that, don’t do it, please don’t do it.” In Meet the Parents, it’s pretty harmless, and you don’t really care much about the characters, so it makes for good comedy.

In Mean Creek the plan is similarly bad but you do care about the characters, and the results could be far more serious, so my anxiety is more acute. It’s one of those ill-conceived schemes in which even if it goes as planned, nobody is going to be happy with the outcome. We see it, and indeed some of the characters see it and manage to convince the others to abandon the plan. But once set in motion, the plan becomes a willful character itself, like a bad child intent on having its dark fun.

The plan has its merits; the idea is to protect a skinny kid from a bully; to teach said bully “a lesson.” But is there really any hope that this plan will work? If the bully is humiliated, will he stop, or will it get worse?

The second reason I enjoyed the film was the stunning performances by relatively unknown actors. I look forward to seeing more in the future particularly from Carly Schroeder, whose previous career high point was on the Lizzie McGuire TV series.

The setting is a canoe trip during which we learn something more about each kid on the boat. The young actors do a remarkable job of creating characters that are at the same time both flawed and likable. We start to care, about the bully as well as about the plotters.

We care about these kids, but a poorly conceived plan, like a naughty child, is likely to ruin the whole trip for everybody.

The plan comes to life despite their attempts to abandon it. It lives because of one silly line, one emotional outburst, one lapse in judgment by Millie, the character we were counting on to keep the others from destroying themselves; “Go ahead, Clyde, start the game.”

And the plan ends with Millie muttering, “I don’t wanna be here, I don’t wanna be here, I don’t wanna be here. We can never be forgiven.” Imagine the turn your life would take if being “here” meant being in a place where forgiveness was impossible.

I doubt the writer (Jacob Aaron Estes, in an impressive writing and directing debut) intended this, but as I watched the film I couldn’t help but think of Iraq.

In Iraq we started out with (I hope) good intentions; to rid the region of a “bully.” But was our plan well conceived? Was it thought through to its likely conclusion? Did we understand what would happen if we succeeded in removing that bully? Those who objected to the plan were overwhelmed by it. Now that we’ve “succeeded,” we hear voices like Millie’s more and more… “I don’t wanna be here, I don’t wanna be here.” And I wonder if we’ll ever be forgiven.

When a simple film about kids on a canoe trip inspires you to think about global geopolitical machinations and the likelihood of forgiveness, I’d say it has succeeded.