The agony and the adolescence of middle school
Regular readers of Spinning Platters may have noticed that I’m partial to coming of age films; The Way, Way Back is a personal favorite, and I had both The Edge of Seventeen and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl on my Top 10 lists for their respective years. But all three of those have now been pushed aside in favor of a new genre champion: writer/director Bo Burnham’s feature debut Eighth Grade sets a new standard for all future coming of age pictures. Filmmakers may as well concede now, because no other film will ever come close to measuring up to this exquisite masterpiece.
That a 20-something year old male actor and writer like Burnham can so fully capture the aching awkwardness of a 14-year-old girl in her waning days of junior high school is simply remarkable. Of course, it helps that Burnham found an exceptional actress in young Elsie Fisher, who so fully inhabits Kayla, a shy (she’s voted “Most Quiet” at the superlatives assembly, much to her embarrassment), socially insecure but deeply watchful and sensitive girl, that you’ll feel at points you’re watching a week-in-the-life-of type documentary.
Kayla, a product of the post-millennial generation, is consumed with social media, and Burnham’s picture, while never over-the-top preachy, makes clear what such obsession is doing to young people’s self esteem. Sitting at dinner with her loving, concerned, but mostly clueless father (an excellent Josh Hamilton), Kayla can barely disconnect from her phone long enough to give her dad eye rolls, heavy sighs, and curt one word answers. She puts on a full face of make up before bed to take selfies for Instagram, and creates a You Tube channel of self-help videos that are wise beyond her years, admonishing her followers to be themselves, and ignore what others think. Of course, the irony is that Kayla desperately cares what others think. More than anything, she just wants to fit in with her peers and have friends and a boyfriend, all vital pieces of the teenage experience that she’s lacking.
Such is the unique strength of Burnham’s film; it’s less about big plot points and narrative elements, and more about small moments that help create a feeling — the almost ineffable feeling of being young, unsure, and wanting so much — from ourselves, our peers, and the world — and not yet knowing how to get those things, or if we’re even strong enough to do so. We see Kayla winding up the school year in classes and assemblies; we see her terrified at attending a pool party to which she’s only been invited by the birthday girl’s mother, who knows Kayla’s father; we see her bond with an older high school student on a high school shadow day, and we see her excitement and nervousness when the older girl invites her to hang out at the mall with her friends.
The movie doesn’t shy away from a central preoccupation of all middle schoolers: a sex ed scene is very funny (“It’s going to be lit!” a way too chipper woman says in a sex ed film within the film), and Kayla’s curiosity involving a banana, unexpectedly interrupted by her father, is the sort of cringeworthy moment all exploring teenagers have had at one time in their lives.
But Burnham treats all these indignities with empathy and respect, and that’s the beauty of this film, and may explain why it won the Audience Award at the SF International Film Festival in April, and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in January. Anybody who made it through middle school and lived to tell about it will immediately be transported back to a time and place long buried and/or long forgotten. Kayla’s tentative steps toward adulthood are so raw and so real that you’ll be viscerally reminded of your own uncomfortable early teen years, the memories of which can’t help but make us all a little kinder to each other when we remember how we all felt odd, alone, nervous, and unconfident — so much like Kayla that it physically hurts.
One of the film’s most heartrending and lovely scenes features Kayla and her father, in a rare moment where she very briefly lets him into her inner life. Stock up on Kleenex before you hit the theater, because you’ll need it for this scene, which underscores the true power of parental love. “If you could see how I see you, you wouldn’t be scared, ever,” Kayla’s dad tells her. Even when parents think they’re not making a difference, Burnham’s film gently emphasizes, they’re always needed by their struggling, searching children, at a time when acceptance and reassurance is so vital to their emotional well being.
“Things will change; you never know what will happen next,” Kayla records in one of her videos. “The thing about growing up is it’s going to happen, so don’t fight it.” That we can see the wisdom of Kayla’s words, even as she tries — and often fails — to believe them, gives the film its great poignancy. As painful as many of the scenes are to watch, Burnham’s picture ultimately falls under the It Gets Better banner, as it offers hope that we all can muddle through — whether it be eighth grade, or life after — with the love and support of those closest to us.
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Eighth Grade opens today at Bay Area theaters.
