ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

coming-of-age

The Tobacconist – Becoming an Adult

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“We’re not in this world to find answers, but to ask qestions.”

Nikolaus Leytner’s The Tobacconist is a tale of looking for love, finding wisdom, and becoming an adult. As with many coming-of-age films there is movement from innocence to facing harsh realities. How one faces such realities has major consequences.

The film opens with 17 year-old Franz (Simon Monzé) sitting on the bottom of a lake. When he sees lightning flashing, he surfaces and runs home through the forest, past his mother and her lover having sex against a tree. Franz climbs into bed to hide. His mother’s lover decides to take a dip in the lake and is struck by lightning and dies. (A bit Oedipal?) His mother sends Franz off to Vienna to apprentice with Otto (Johannes Krisch), her former lover who runs a tobacco shop.

Otto, who lost a leg in World War I, is cynical, especially now that the Nazis have occupied Austria. Otto’s shop is welcoming to all, even Jews and Communists. (Although Otto is somewhat cold to a Nazi customer.) Otto begins to teach Franz about business, and dealing with people. The first lesson is that the shop is more than a place of business, it is a “temple of pleasure and spirit”. He also begins to help the naïve Franz see what is happening in the world around him.

One of the customers in the shop is Sigmund Freud (Bruno Ganz). When Franz asks the renown psychologist about love and women, Freud admits to being as confused about that as Franz. But he tells Franz you don’t have to understand water before you jump in to a lake. So Franz heads off to meet a girl and chooses Anezka (Emma Drougunova), a beautiful Bohemian who is a bit older and experienced. When she abandons him after a fun evening, he tracks her down to discover she lives in squalor and is a fan dancer. He tries to kindle a relationship, but it never quite takes off.

Meanwhile, the Nazi are beginning to crack down. Everyone is faced with choices to make for how they will survive. Otto is arrested. Freud’s family wants him to emigrate to London. Franz wants to have Anezka run away with him to some place peaceful. Suddenly Franz must take on maturity. But what will that mean? And what will it cost him?

An interesting part of this film, in light of Sigmund Freud being one of the key characters, is possible psychological images: begin underwater, dead animals, a spider that lives in the tobacco shop, and Franz’s many dreams, which Freud encourages him to write down. It might make for an interesting project to watch the film with Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams at hand. But in this film Freud never psychoanalyses Franz or his problems. Rather he serves, along with Otto, as a mentor to a young man who must grow up quickly.

The film tracks Franz’s growing maturity in a variety or ways. One subtle way is through clothing. For the first part of the film, Franz is always wearing short pants or knickers. After Otto’s arrest, when he must now run the shop himself, he begins to wear trousers. But the real coming-of-age moment is when Franz has taken Freud a gift of Havana cigars, Freud shares one with Franz who has not smoked prior to this. In that scene, Freud recognizes Franz as an adult, and perhaps Franz recognizes that for the first time.

As Franz makes his journey from naïveté to maturity, he grows through the wisdom imparted by his two mentors: Otto and Freud. Wisdom is something valued in scripture. But it is never seen as an easy path. In Proverbs, we are reminded that many follow after the siren call of Folly. In Ecclesiastes, the biblical cynic philosopher calls his search for wisdom “an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with.” In his time in Otto’s “temple of pleasure and spirit” Franz learns many new things. Through the words and actions of his two mentors, Franz begins to see that he must put away the childish part of his life. The world needs him to be involved and to act properly and courageously.

The Tobacconist is available on Virtual Cinema through local art houses.

Photos courtesy of Menemsha Films

House of Hummingbird – The Trials of 8th Grade

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“It takes some time to learn to like yourself.”

Bora Kim’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama House of Hummingbird takes us inside the struggle of a middle school girl as she keeps looking for something in her life that will bring emotional nurture and fulfilment.

Eighth grader Eun-hee (Ji-hu Park) is seen by many of her classmates as a bit slow and doomed to a life serving them. What joy she finds is in drawing comics. Her older brother is abusive. Her older sister a bad role model. Her mother struggles with chronic pain. Her father is demanding. There is little nurture to be found at home. Even when Eun-hee finds a lump under her ear, she must deal with the doctors herself. She makes an occasional friend, both male and female, and even has some tentative romantic experiences. But her friends seem to go off with others, leaving her alone.

Her life brightens when she meets Yong-ji (Sae-Byeok Kim), her new Chinese tutor. Yong-ji is young and pretty. And she smokes! But what really makes Yong-ji special is that she notices Eun-hee. She is willing to talk with her and listen to her. She treats her as a real person. These interactions give Eun-hee a glimpse of what she may become. Yong-ji gives Eun-hee bits of insight that could help her as she struggles to find her place in life.

The film is set in 1994, and from time to time key news stories mark the passing of time. First the beginning of the World Cup, then the death of North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung, and eventually the catastrophic collapse of the Seongsu Bridge that left 32 people dead—and is a pivotal point in the film. There is a sense that Korea as a whole is going through transitions, just as Eun-hee is facing constant change in her life.

Eun-hee is at an interesting coming-of-age point. There is something about the uncertainty and insecurities of eighth grade that makes it especially conducive to such examinations. One might compare the 2018 American film Eighth Grade. Although the American film was told with much more comedy, both films reflect the difficulty of that age. Eun-hee captures a bit of that difficulty when she ponders “When will my life start to shine?”

Such feelings are not limited to fourteen year-olds. Coming-of-age films, such as House of Hummingbird, aren’t just about looking at how difficult growing up can be; they offer us a chance to reflect on our own issues of facing a world that is filled with abuse, abandonment, and grief. Perhaps the key to happiness is, as with hummingbirds, constantly searching for the sweetness that may come our way.

House of Hummingbird is available on Virtual Cinema through local theaters.

Photos courtesy of Well Go USA

Hala – Between Two Worlds

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Hala is the story of a young woman caught between two world—her parents’ and the culture she has grown up in. It is a stereotypical coming-of-age story with the additional conflict of having to live by additional rules that grow out of her parents’ values. But it also turns into not just about her yearning for freedom, but also about what it means to be a woman in a male dominated society.

Hala (Geraldine Viswanathan) is a Muslim high school student with Pakistani immigrant parents. Although she wears a hijab and covers her body, even in PE, she is very much a typical American teenager. She rides a skateboard. She is awakening sexually, but not sure what it means. She is good in school.

But her relationship with her parents is uneven. She is fairly close with her father (Azad Khan), but constantly in conflict with her mother (Purbi Joshi). Part of the tension derives from her father’s assimilation into American life (he’s a lawyer). He and Hala converse in English. The mother, although she understands English, always speak in Urdu. So when Hala and her mother speak it is clear that they are from different cultures. Her mother is trying to make sure she is brought up properly. Her father’s only concern is that she is staying away from boys.

Of course, she has been crushing on Jesse (Jack Kilmer), a boy at school and the skateboard park. As their relationship grows, Hala keeps it secret, sneaking out to meet him. One day with Jesse, she sees her father and discovers his secret, which devastates her opinion of him. Her sexual awakening grows, but not in satisfactory ways.

When an issue arises with a teacher (Hala’s fault) and her parents are called to school, the conflict escalates within the household. It is now her mother who gives voice to Hala’s needs, while her father has become the adversary. In time Hala must find a synthesis that will allow her to remain faithful to her religious values, but also experience the freedom that American society offers. The film’s final scene gives us an idea that she is beginning to find a blend of the two cultures which will be more acceptable to her.

Director Minhal Baig steers the viewer in how to understand what is going one, at times a bit heavy-handedly. When we see Hala in school, it is in her English class where they are given an assignment to write an essay featuring a point of view. (That concept comes up a few other times in the film.) This film is clearly from Hala’s point of view. We don’t get the perspective of her parents, or of the teacher involved, or even Jesse. It is all focused on Hala’s needs, desires, and decisions. That is, of course, what makes for a coming-of-age story. That singular point of view is appropriate for that age, but it also makes the story a bit more shallow than it could be.

The more explicit way we are instructed how to read this film is by Hala’s identification with Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, which she is assigned to read in school. The lack of freedom for women that Ibsen described in that play continues to be felt by many today, especially in some ethnic/religious settings. We could easily see Hala as an updated reimaging of Ibsen’s work.

One aspect of the perspective of this film that should be noted is that it seems to assume a superiority of American culture over the cultural values her parents bring with them. We know all through the film that this is about Hala’s struggle for freedom—especially freedom as it is seen in our culture. Perhaps there is (or is not) a superiority to our culture. But the presentation of her parents’ cultural values seems a bit dismissive, as if we will naturally see it as wrong-headed and backwards. Perhaps the real answer for Hala is not to win her freedom, but to find the best of all the values to incorporate into her life.

Philophobia: Stepping into the Future

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Set in the rolling hills of the English countryside, Guy Davies’ Philophobia is a picture of small-town adolescence. With only one more week of high school remaining, Kai (Joshua Glenister), an aspiring writer, and his friends are both excited and terrified about what lies ahead. As the clock ticks down on their school experience, the teens must wrestle with their awaked sexual desires and new battles with power in ways that may leave them all changed forever.

Written and directed by Guy Davies, Philophobia is an interesting coming-of-age film that balances the realities and fantasies of adolescence. As one of the key moments in the lives of every teen, Philophobia shows much of the angst, confusion and fear associated with the end of high school. Engaging performances from its cast of youth serve as a window into the heart of an age where teens are caught between the life they have known and the life they have not yet discovered. What’s more, by telling the story primarily through the mind of Kai, Davies allows himself the freedom to move back and forth between the situations that every teen faces and the images and dreams that they harbour in their minds. What’s more, stemming from his own personal experience, Davies’ film also captures the contradictory nature of small-town life by highlighting its intimate nature but also its suffocating environment. As such, the film wisely maintains a small scope with huge implications on the horizon.

For Kai, the biggest questions involve the future but not only for his career and future job opportunities. By emphasizing the gap between youth and adults, Philophobia effectively underscores the difficulties of growing up when young people are lacking in mentors. With few strong male role models in his life, Kai’s heart questions the very nature of masculinity. Yearning for the (literal) girl next door and bullied by her boyfriend, Kai wonders what it means to be a man. Caught between youth and adulthood, he wrestles with issues of power, sexuality and simply balancing fun and responsibility. As he navigates these difficult questions, few adults seem to understand—or are even interested in—his journey, despite his obvious search for role models. (This also is shown through Davies’ recurring motif of a mysterious stag that mysteriously appears in the distance during moments where Kai needs guidance.) 

Due to this sort of emotional neglect, Kai and his friends are left adrift in a sea of confusion to discover for themselves who they want to be. As a result, there remains an intrinsic sadness within this coming-of-age tale that speaks to what happens when adults lose sight of the seriousness of the challenges of youth and cease to listen to their issues. To these adults, love and patience give way to telling them to ‘follow the rules’ and, in the process, the youth become further alienated. (To be fair, there is at least one male teacher who cares about Kai’s future and well-being, even if his encouragement is fleeting at best.)

Philophobia may mean the fear of falling in love but, in the end, the film demonstrates most clearly the fear of stepping into the future. Torn between teen and adulthood, Kai and his friends wonder what life has in store for them and what it means to lean into the unknown. However, without caring support from adults who have experienced this transition themselves, this moment in time can be much more difficult.

To hear audio of our interview with writer/director Guy Davies, click here.

Philophobia debuted last night at Heartland International Film Festival and will also screen at the San Diego Film Festival on Thursday, October 17th, 2019.

Before You Know It: Growing Up is Hard to Do

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Before You Know It tells the story of Rachel (Hannah Pearl Utt) and Jackie (Jen Tullock), two dysfunctional co-dependent sisters who live above a theatre in New York. Tasked with caring for their aging father (Mandy Patinkin), the two women are shocked to discover that Sherrell (Judith Light), the mother they thought had died when they were young, is alive and starring on a popular daytime soap opera. Emboldened with questions as to where she has been all of their lives, the two women set out on a quest to meet their mother and begin a relationship with her.

Starring and directed by Hannah Pearl Utt, Before You Know It is a charming coming of age comedy that examines the responsibilities of parent-child relationships. While the film works through several heavier topics ranging from grief to puberty, it does so with a light touch, allowing the comedic talents of its cast to come to the forefront. Veteran actors Judith Light and Mandy Patinkin are given suitable material for their talents, yet it’s the relationship between the two sisters that drives the story forward. As Rachel and Jackie, Utt and Taylor have a solid rapport as two sisters with very different outlooks on life. Despite having no children of her own, Rachel takes on the role of caregiver for the family while Jackie lives her life more freely, even though she is the mother of pre-teen Dodge (Oona Yaffe). 

By highlighting the parent-child relationship, Before You Know It shows the dangers of inadvertently mirroring our own damaged upbringing. For example, while Rachel and Jackie mourn the loss of their father and wonder why they were abandoned as children, Jackie fails to realize that she too is missing key moments in her own daughter’s life. In other words, though they blame their mother for missing their childhood, neither woman is there for young Dodge as she is attempting to navigate puberty and her own questions about becoming a woman. While it’s hard to judge their behaviour based on the revelation of their long-lost mother, their self-absorption also begins to lay the groundwork to repeat similar behaviour that they despised so much growing up as well. In doing so, Before You Know Itdemonstrates that ‘coming of age’ can happen at any time, regardless of one’s stage of life. As Dodge is growing into a young woman, so too must Rachel and Jackie finally step out and take responsibility for their own lives as well. (In fact, this journey also mirrors that of Sherrell, who must face down her own past and grow into the role of responsible parent as well.)

Fun and light-hearted in its approach, Before You Know It is an enjoyable look at what it means to become an adult. Taking on double duty as director and star, Utt proves herself an interesting talent both in front of and behind the camera, creating a story filled with grace and humanity.

Before You Know It opens in select theatres on Friday, September 20, 2019. 

The Hate U Give – Discovering a Self and a Voice

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In Hamlet, Polonius tells his son Laertes, “This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as day the night, thou canst not be false to any man.” In The Hate U Give, a young African-American girl must struggle not just with being true to herself, but with which of her personae is her true self.

Starr Carter (Amandla Stenberg) lives in two worlds. Her parents, Maverick (Russell Hornsby) and Lisa (Regina Hall), have opted to live in Garden Heights, a working-class black neighborhood, even though they could afford to live in a more upscale area. Mav and Lisa are from Garden Heights and want to be part of the community there. In Garden Heights, Starr Version One fits in perfectly. She speaks the slang and wears the right shoes. She knows the people there. They are her people.

Amandla Stenberg stars in Twentieth Century Fox’s THE HATE U GIVE. Photo Credit: Erika Doss.

But Mav and Lisa want more for Starr and her brothers, Seven (Lamar Johnson) and Sekani (TJ Wright), so they send them to a predominantly white prep school across town. At school, Starr Version Two also fits in. She leaves the slang behind. (Her friends use it to sound cool; she would just sound “hood.”) Her best friends at school, including her boyfriend, are all white. Every day she goes back and forth between these worlds, but she is two very different people in each.

L-R: Megan Lawless, Amandla Stenberg, and Sabrina Carpenter in Twentieth Century Fox’s THE HATE U GIVE. Photo Credit: Erika Doss.

When she goes to a party in the Heights one night, a fight breaks out and her childhood friend Khalil helps her escape the violence as they drive off in his car. When Khalil is pulled over by a police officer, the traffic stop escalates into a confrontation that ends up with Khalil being shot and killed. Starr is the only witness. How that role plays out in her two separate worlds forces her to come to grips with who she is and how she must act.

Starr struggles under the weight of her responsibility. Many want her to testify against the officer to bring justice for Khalil’s death. But there are others who want her to stay silent, including King (Anthony Mackie), head of the neighborhood gang (to which Mav once belonged). King does not want anything to come out about Khalil dealing drugs for him. At school, Starr doesn’t want it known that she is the witness because of what her friends might think. She also encounters those there who side with the police officer, assuming nothing was wrong with the killing.

Amandla Stenberg and Algee Smith in Twentieth Century Fox’s THE HATE U GIVE. Photo Credit: Erika Doss.

How can Starr be true to herself (and her family, her friendship with Khalil, her community, and the concept of justice) when she has not yet learned who she really is?

Identity is a key concept in this film. Starr and her brothers have names that their parents gave to them for specific reasons that reflect who they are to become. The film also shows how shoes can be a part of one’s identity. What shoes someone wears may speak loudly to those around them. It may seem like a minor bit of life, but within the context of the film, one is what one wears. For Starr, her growing sense of justice and seeking her voice means she must come to terms with all the ways her identity has been fragmented. It is of note that in the voice over we hear of Starr’s testimony to the grand jury, we do not hear about what happened but about who Khalil was to her. To share Khalil’s identity is key for her.

The film opens with Mav and Lisa giving “The Talk” to nine year old Starr and her brothers. They try to explain the injustice they will inevitably encounter. They teach them how to behave when stopped by police in hopes of staying alive. Then Mav gives them the Black Panthers’ Ten Point Plan and demands that they memorize it. “Know your rights. Know your worth”, he tells them. There is something bordering on the sacred in these moments. To be sure, it lays out a very scary reality, but it is also clearly an act of love and nurture.

Amandla Stenberg stars in Twentieth Century Fox’s THE HATE U GIVE. Photo Credit: Erika Doss.

That tone of near sacredness recurs often throughout the film, often in small ways, such as when Starr looks through her box of childhood memories, and at time in more profound ways, as when Starr addresses the crowd at a protest. It is a reminder of the many times in lives that we encounter the sacred, not because we are looking for the presence of God, but because the divine in always close at hand.

It would be an oversimplification to call this a Black Lives Matter film, although it most certainly fits that description. But it is also a far deeper examination of not only African-American identity, but of the importance of finding oneself in order to know one’s place in the world and how that fulfills what one is meant to do with their life. Starr has been shaped by many competing forces including the systemic racism of society. In this film she begins to come into her own—to find her voice and her future.

Available now on 4K, Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD, the film comes with several special features: “Maverick and Seven Protecting Their Home,” “Uprising,” “Seven’s Graduation” extended scenes; “Starr: Shine Your Light,” “Starting a Conversation,” “The Talk,” “Code Switching,” “The Heart of Georgia,” and “Thank U Georgia” featurettes; “and audio commentary with director Tillman with select cast and crew.

Photos courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox

All These Small Moments

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All These Small Moments (2018)

What moments shape you?

In this coming of age tale, we see a snippet of the daily struggles of Howie (Brendan Meyer). Howie is simultaneously navigating his parent’s rocky relationship, infatuation with an unknown girl he sees on the bus, and another girl who is infatuated with him.

We get a good indication of Howie’s family dynamic early on in this film when he comes to the breakfast table dressed in a freshly dry-cleaned shirt. Howie has a cursing outburst and instead of reprimanding him, his mother, Carla (Molly Ringwald) only harps on the fact that he got his shirt dry-cleaned while trying not to laugh at him.

In my opinion the stand-outs in this film were the two female supporting actors, Jemima Kirke and Harley Quinn Smith. Not only did I feel that their characters were the most intriguing of the cast, but their executions were impressive. The important stories to be told in this film were theirs. In fact, the stories behind all of the different women in this film are quite interesting.

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Odessa (Jemima Kirke) is a beautiful young woman who gives off an intriguing and mysterious air, drawing Howie in. He instantly wants to be part of whatever it is that Odessa is part of. But behind closed doors, Odessa is trying to cope with the end of a relationship. Perhaps Odessa begins hanging around with Howie because she appreciates the positive attention he gives her and that she may be missing from her past relationship.

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Lindsay (Harley Quinn Smith) is an awkward teen struggling to bounce back from a spiraling rumor and the effects of a scarring situation. She desperately tries to get Howie’s attention while he is completely distracted by thoughts of Odessa.

Howie’s mother, Carla, is very distracted in her daily life and seems partially removed from her children as she struggles with her marriage falling apart. She is trying to find herself again as an individual. It’s sad to see her struggle during this difficult time, yet more sad to see her sons get so little from her. And so little from their father for that matter.

This film took an awkward turn for me during a scene when Howie and his friends were sitting around watching females exercise on television. The camera hops from boy to boy as they not-so-discreetly touch themselves while watching. I’m not positive why this was necessary, but I wonder if perhaps it speaks to the different types of relationships that some young men have with different women in their lives. Objectification of women seems to often be a fairly common milestone in the male evolution.

The main women in Howie’s life, Lindsay, Odessa, and Carla, are all in very different stages of their lives but all have broken hearts for different reasons. It’s intriguing to see them navigate these hurdles, but even more fascinating to see the effect that these three women have on Howie. How are these influences going to shape Howie as he continues to grow into a man?

Jinn – Coming of Age and Coming to Faith

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Teenage years can be a difficult time as one tries establish an identity. But what happens when religion is suddenly put into the mix? In Jinn, a young woman must learn how to fit Islam into her life and determine how to adapt herself to a new way of seeing things.

Summer (Zoe Renee) is a typical Los Angeles high school student. She and two friends are working on a dance routine for a talent show. How risqué can they make it without causing trouble?

But then her mother Jade (Simone Missick), a local TV meteorologist, converts to Islam. How will her new faith affect Summer? For example, Summer loves pepperoni on her pizza, but that is not halal. What about covering her hair and the look it gives her? Summer’s friends bring up all the negative (and ignorant) stereotypes about Islam. As Summer goes with Jade to the masjid, she begins to come to terms with what is required.

She also meets Tahir (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), a classmate who also attends the masjid. Tahir has grown up Muslim, and he guides her into the lifestyle that he has lived his life in. He introduces her to beef pepperoni—and also to his parents who are welcoming and accepting and seem to have a very easy approach to Islam. In time a romance develops between Summer and Tahir.

In time, Summer opts to accept Islam herself. But just saying the words is not the same as internalizing a religion and its teachings. She struggles to keep her old ways. At one point, she takes a selfie with an appropriate head covering, but in a scanty top and posts it with a hashtag “halalhottie”. She doesn’t seem to grasp how she is supposed to act within her faith. It seems like a game to her. In time various issues will arise that put her in conflict with her friends, her family, and the masjid.

The film offers a view of Islam that is much gentler than we often see in the media. These are the kinds of people we would know and like. When we hear the imam’s sermons, they are not that different at their core than what might be heard in a Christian church. And in fact, as I watched the film it seemed to me that the story might well be very similar if it involved a conversion to Christianity. Young Christians have the same kind of struggles (and failures) that Summer faces.

Jade is also an interesting study in conversion, although the film spends less time on her story. She has found in Islam a sense of peace and belonging. She has something of a new convert’s zeal, studying the Qur’an regularly. But she also, at times, seems to be trying to reinvent herself—such as when she tries on possible Muslim names. When Jade decides to begin wearing her hijab on camera it is both a personal discipline and a declaration for the world to see. (And it could be detrimental to her job.) For Jade the hijab is a serious symbol; for Summer it is a fashion statement.

The title comes from the cosmology of angels, jinns, and humanity that the imam mentions in a sermon. Angels are made of light, but have no free will, only doing what God wishes. Jinns are born of fire, humans are born of clay, but both have free will. Jinns can bring their fire to warm the world or destroy it. Summer begins to consider if perhaps she is a jinn and how that will shape her understanding of what she is doing with her faith.

This was one of the films I most anticipated at AFIFest, and it didn’t disappoint. This is a film that could be valuable for all people of faith to consider how we bring together our personal lives and our religious lives. We may want to believe that the two are inseparable, but as we watch Summer and others in the film, we come to understand how easy it is to treat our faith as something to be used or not when convenient. It can be something we put on or take off (like a hijab or a cross necklace) as it suits us. But we also see those in the film for whom their faith is integral to their lives—leading them in righteousness.

 

Finding Your Voice: 1on1 with Bo Burnham (director, EIGHTH GRADE)

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Written and directed by Bo Burnham, Eighth Grade follows the story of Kayla (portrayed brilliantly by Elsie Fisher), a pre-teen girl in the final week before her middle school graduation. Looking forward to high school in the fall, Kayla is caught between who she was and who she wants to be. As her school year comes to a close, she must attempt to find herself in the midst of adolescence without losing herself in the process. When asked why he chose to focus his story on the trials of an eighth grade girl, Burnham explains that there’s an innocence and awkwardness to that age that he wanted to explore.

“I’ve met a lot of high schoolers. [Today’s] high schoolers seem very blahzay and over it,” he begins. “They have a thousand yard stare that feels like they got from the war of junior high. You know what I mean? I think of coming of age in high school, but high school is when you’re becoming an adult. When you’re an eighth grade, you’re literally still a child. When you’re in high school, I don’t think you have ‘child’ left in you but, when you’re in 8th grade, you still have full blown child going on [within you].”

“I wanted to make a movie that I liked and I wanted to see. So, it definitely wasn’t for eighth graders,” he continues. “I hope that eighth graders like it, but it’s definitely not primarily for them or only for them. If I’m honest, I think people are just about as awkward and weird as eighth graders. I don’t think it’s that different. I think we’re all pretty awkward. I hope it serves kids and their parents in specific ways but I also hope anyone can see themselves in her, you know what I mean? It’s the sort of sexist thing that’s put on a lot of young female stories. No one goes, “Oh, Hamlet. Was that only for Princes of Denmark?” Everyone sees themselves in him, even if they aren’t a prince or a man or a Danish or whatever. I think a 13 year old girl can be the same thing. Everyone should be able to see themselves in her… I connect to her personally.”

With Kayla, Burnham has created a character who feels completely honest and authentic in her approach to the world around her. In order to bring that sense of genuineness to life onscreen, Burnham realized that he had to perfect Kayla’s voice, a process that took him online for research.

“The first step was [to create] the voice of [the film],” he remembers. “So, I was just listening to kids talk online about themselves. You know, kids that we’re talking with 10 views on their channel. The first thing I did in writing was to just transcribe exactly what they said. Every sound, you know what I mean? So, I was transcribing [things like] ‘Uh, yeah. So, uh, yeah, sorry, what I’m trying to say is…’ That’s what I was trying to write. I was watching these videos [thinking] if this were a performance, that would be incredible because the way kids actually sound is so much more complex than the way kids are written and performed. So then after transcribing a dozen or so, I started to write my own in that voice… The movie grew out of that voice, really. The voice, to me, contains the whole meaning of the movie. [It’s in] the performance and what she wants to be, how she thinks she might be, and what’s the gap between that? It’s all there in just a sentence.”

Once he’d established Kayla’s voice, Burnham’s next step was to establish the film’s tone. Looking back, he sought to emphasize the weight and importance of her challenges, rather than focus on broad comedy.

“I really did approach every scene the same in terms of just trying to reflect your subjective experience,” he explains. “I wasn’t in funny scenes trying to be funny. [For example, in] the banana scene, we weren’t laughing. I was taking that very seriously because I was trying to feel with her. This is an awful moment of your dad catching you in this really bad thing. Moments that don’t sound like a big deal of all different types, when you actually live them, are a huge deal. Go to a pool party. It’s nothing. But when you actually go to a pool party, it’s not nothing, at least initially.”

Also central to Eighth Grade is Kayla’s relationship with her father, an earnest man who loves his daughter yet struggles to connect with her in the midst of her issues. When asked why he chose to explore that tension between generations in this way, Burnham answers that this sort of miscommunication is simply reality.

“I just think that’s the truth and how it maybe even should it be,” he states. “It might be the point of it to not quite understand each other. What he kind of gives her at the end is, “I cannot understand you in this moment. I have no idea what you’re going through right now. But I understand like the meta-you better than you do.” That’s sort of what my mom gave me all the time, when I’d be going through [stuff]. I’d [say], ‘You don’t know what I’m going through at all right now.’ Then she’d say, ‘I don’t. But I saw you go through something at four and then eight and then 12. I know this feels like a really new thing you’re going through, but I’ve seen you feel this way before and you’ve gotten through it.’ [Parents] don’t specifically know you moment to moment, but they know the overarching you. At that age you just can’t attend to [that] because two years ago feels like forever ago and you were a different person.”

While one might wonder if he were overwhelmed at the prospect of stepping into the director’s chair for the first time, Burnham believes that he was able to play to his strengths by focusing on the youth themselves.

Says Burnham, “I wrote it with the intention [to direct]. I had written another script that I tried to get made and it didn’t happen and then  [thought I would] write something that I know I can direct… The intention was to lean into whatever strengths I thought I had, like scene work or working with young people. I may not be a director that really knows how to direct a film, but I know young people in the Internet pretty well, so if I can stay close to what I feel like I know then I can be in decent shape.”

However, despite his original vision, Burnham notes that the change in the political landscape also altered how he views the film.

“I was certain I was making it for Hillary’s America,” he expresses. “The movie just felt different when we were making it because then, all of a sudden, Trump is there and felt like, ‘Whoa.’ When she’s making that video to herself at the end , we were making [the film] saying [we] really don’t know if she’s going to make it. I don’t know if the country makes it to when she’s a senior, which was so different than when it was written. When it was written, it was going to be a subtle sweet interrogation of this thing. Now that there’s a female president, we all feel a little better about ourselves. Instead, the story became a lot more urgent when Trump was there which was insane.”

Of course, with any conversation about today’s youth comes an exploration of their relationship with the internet and social networking. A veteran of the YouTube world, Burnham wanted to explore the online world in a way that revealed how pre-teens engaged it, rather than his own generation.

“I wanted to talk about how [the internet] felt to me and I think I did,” he explains. “When I tried to write about someone my age dealing with the Internet, it just felt so embarrassing. It was just so hatable. But, when you’re an eighth grader, we can kind of like forgive our behavior a little bit better. We can look at it and [say that] she isn’t narcissistic. She isn’t self-obsessed. She’s just looking for connections. She’s just desperate to be loved, like we all are. I think that’s actually how we all are acting on the Internet. We’re just like pretending like it’s something else… The Internet means the most to those kids because they don’t know a world before it. So, it’s not this other thing to them that they’re living with. It’s the way that they live and always have.”

“[The internet] is there but it’s also theirs to change. That doesn’t mean they can’t react to it. I just think that older people in charge of in Silicon Valley need to more deeply understand this responsibility they have because of how important this thing is and how deep it reaches into them. It isn’t just like some cool marketing technique. It’s actually the neurochemistry of an entire generation that you have in your hand. The kids will learn that. It’s more the job that people with power [must realize]… They have like a lot of power and they need to wield that responsibly.”

Rather than use Eighth Grade to make some form of cultural argument, Burnham’s ultimate desire for the film is for people to realize that they are not alone in their fears and anxieties.

“I just hope people see it and feel something,” he claims. “I really don’t want the movie to be prescriptive or tell you what to think or wag a finger or be a ted talk. The hope with everything is always that you just feel a little less alone. I mean, that was the point for me to do it, just to [realize that] these feelings that I have that I think are so unique are not unique. They are shared by other people. A whole wide array of people can see it and see their own feelings reflected in someone that may have been like them or may have not been like them.”

 

Eighth Grade is in theatres now.

For full audio of our interview with Bo Burnham, click here.

Call Me by Your Name – Moving Past Innocence

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“To make yourself feel nothing so you don’t feel anything. What a waste.”

Coming-of-age stories are often about discovery as characters emerge from childhood. They often harken back to the story of Eden, as Adam and Eve eat forbidden fruit and their eyes are opened to see and experience the world in new ways. In Call Me by Your Name, a young man spends his summer exploring new emotions and his sexuality. The process, like the Eden experience, is both painful and enlightening.

Elio (Timothée Chalamet) spends the summer with his family in their Northern Italian villa. It is a very intellectual family. His father (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a professor of Greco-Roman culture. His mother (Amira Cesar) is an interpreter who brings a variety of cultures into the home. Elio describes them as a mix of American, Italian, French, and Jewish. Elio is something of a musical prodigy, spends his days reading and exploring a relationship with Marzia (Esther Garrel).

Then Oliver (Armie Hammer), an American grad student, arrives to spend the summer with the family. As the summer progresses, their relationship evolves into friendship, but a sexual attraction also grows between them. Elio is unsure of how to approach his sexuality, which expresses itself in various ways. It’s not so much about forbidden fruit, but about being overwhelmed by the variety of possibilities before him, and finding the choice that will most fulfill him.

The Edenic association is enhanced by the sumptuous cinematography and lush settings of the film. (My wife thought each shot was like looking at a work of art.) The leisurely pacing of the story allows viewers to enjoy the beauty of the time and place. The locations are just as seductive as the relationships that Elio is developing.

I hesitate to say that this is a story about the loss of innocence. Even the story of Eden can be read not as about a fall and sin, but as a movement to a fuller life. That is closer to what Elio experiences in this summer romance. He is learning what it means to love. He may be unsure of how to express that love or even the relationship of love and his awakening sexuality, but he is discovering that essentially to love means to open oneself. He also discovers that in opening himself he is exposed to the possibility of being hurt and hurting others. That is very much like Eden—it is a two-edged sword that brings both joy and pain.