Monday 20 February 2017

My Favourite Films - The Perks of Being A Wallflower (2012)

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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