Mysteries of Pittsburgh, The2008

Director
Rawson Marshall Thurber

Actors

Jon Foster (Art Bechstein)
Peter Sarsgaard (Cleveland Arning)
Sienna Miller (Jane Bellwether)
Nick Nolte (Joe Bechstein)
Mena Suvari (Phlox Lombardi)
Omid Abtahi (Mohammed)

A college graduate’s defining summer, defying his gangster father while exploring love, sexuality, and the mysteries of his life and his city.
Art Bechstein, recent colleges graduate in 1980s Pittsburgh facing the last summer before he’s expected to enter a safe, conventional career arranged by his powerful gangster father. Restless and unsure of what he wants, Art drifts through a dull job at a bookstore and a casual affair with his boss, Phlox, until he meets Jane, a free‑spirited violinist, and her charismatic, reckless boyfriend Cleveland. Drawn into their hard‑partying world, Art becomes entangled in an intense triangle of friendship, desire and jealousy that forces him to question his sexuality, his loyalties and his future. As tensions with his criminal father rise and Cleveland’s dangerous ties to local mobsters escalate, Art’s defining summer builds toward choices that will separate him from his youth and from the “mysteries” of the city that shaped him.
“Michael Chabon’s honored novel, ‘The Mysteries of Pittsburgh’ has baffled filmmakers and confounded producers since the book’s release in 1988. In this reverential and smart distillation, filmmaker Rawson Marshall Thurber has captured the essence of the coming-of-age novel; select-site audiences will warm to the craftsmanship and storytelling.” – The Hollywood Reporter
“Michael Barrett’s cinematography gives the film and the city of Pittsburgh just enough of a picturesque dream-like quality that, like its protagonist, you’ll remember.” – Los Angeles Daily News
“Writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber manages to astonish with ‘The Mysteries of Pittsburgh’.” – New York Press