I find Coming of Age films to be challenging to both make,
and discuss. It’s a genre that has
to connect to its audience and have us empathise with the characters, for us to
say “Yeah I’ve been there”, for a story to accurately represent the obstacles
teenagers come up against. An action film just needs cool fight scenes, a
comedy just needs to make you laugh, you don’t need to care about the characters, yeah it’s always swell when you
do, but its not the main takeaway. This is why Coming of Age is a challenge,
because in order for it to work, the characters have to act and go through
things that the audience has gone through, because of this, if they go to
general then it doesn’t really connect with anyone, but then if they go too
specific they’ll alienate a fair portion of their audience, and I think that’s
the only way it can work. I’ve met people who say they didn’t like Juno because
the characters seemed fraudulent and manipulative, but that’s because they
weren’t characters meant to represent people like them, they were meant to
represent people like me. But then again I could say the exact same thing about
Say Anything or Fish Tank, coming of age films I’ve disliked for not connecting
with me, but they’re not trying to
connect to people like me because it’s not about people like me.
This all makes The Perks of Being A Wallflower a bit of an
enigma, because while in certain ways I certainly connect with the characters,
the scenarios and characters are much more intense than anything I went through
as a teenager. Written and Directed by Stephen Chbosky, based on his book, the
film follows Charlie (Logan Lerman) a clinically depressed teenager moving to a
new school, becoming friends with Sam (Emma Watson) and Patrick (Ezra Miller)
and the struggles he has fitting in. So that basic premise is probably the
closest I get to connecting to this film, this came out in 2012 when I was in
my first year of 6th form, going to a new school where I spent my
first year having no friends, so wasn’t exactly the most social of times in my
life, so that isolation certainly hooked me, a great example of watching a film
at just the right time in your life. Apart from that, there isn’t much for me
to identify with, the characters talk a lot about art in the same ways me and
my friends do…that’s about it. So where does the love for this film come from?
Could it be how mature it was compared to other Coming of
Age films? Because that’s another big problem in a lot of them, the stakes are
set really low, “Will these two
characters hook up?” “Will this guy pass his midterm?” it’s not helped that
they’re repeated a lot in a billion films. Here we have a film dealing with
depression, homophobia, sexual abuse, and it treats them all with the weight
and dignity that topics like this should be. They’re serious things that affect
a lot of people and especially when it happens to teenagers when we’re not
exactly at our most developed so we don’t always know how to deal with them.
The film never talks down to its audience and never downplays or poorly
represents these subject matters, it took bigger risks, it put in the effort
and it paid off.
The acting is also superb, Lerman’s performance as a
depressed teenager is subtle and nuanced, a much more accurate representation
of what people with depression or social anxiety are like. Not very energetic,
soft spoken, awkward at socialising, instead of what a lot of films represent
depression as, incredibly sad, constantly crying and having panic attacks on
the hour. Ezra Miller’s incredibly energetic and funny, completely steals the
film, and Emma Watson, though a great actress, maybe the accent is a
bit…noticeable. Though maybe that’s just because I’m so used to seeing her as
Hermione it can be a bit jarring to hear her with a different accent. Speaking
of Hermione, it’s funny to see how many of these cast members have been in nerdy
pop-culture. Harry Potter, Justice League, Avengers, Scott Pilgrim, Percy
Jackson, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Scott Pilgrim again. Just on a small note,
the soundtrack is superb, and I’m pretty sure that’s an objective observation;
David Bowie, Sonic Youth, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, you can’t argue against
this.
I’m not entirely sure what else there is to say. This may
end up being one of my shorter discussions on my favourite films, but that’s
because this isn’t really a film that does a lot of things really well, but it
does have a few things it does amazingly well. It has superb acting, a superb
soundtrack, but most of all it takes the subject matter seriously, writes
realistic and engaging characters, keeps everything feeling fresh and honest and
is in my opinion the best coming of age film of the 21st century.
Like I said, it’s hard for me to pinpoint why I love this film so much when I don’t
connect to these characters the same way I do with a Juno or an Almost Famous,
minus the initial set-up for the movie, but there’s something about the charm
and sincerity to it all that I do deeply empathise with it, even if I can’t
sympathise with it. Which in a way is what the best stories are supposed to do,
get you to care and connect with characters, even if it’s not in scenarios you’ve
had to experience. Well, this film achieves that perfectly, and is one of my
favourite all time films.
-Danny
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