While I continue to add films
to a forthcoming grab-bag review, I just watched two standouts that make a
distinctive pair, so I highlight them here.
They each feature a motherless kid, a girl and a boy at opposite ends of
the country and circumstance, but equally emblematic of the difficulties of
growing up in today’s America .
Two people lift Eighth
Grade (MC-89, NFX ) way, way above the normal run of teen comedies,
writer-director Bo Burnham and star-in-the-making Elsie Fisher. The former is a 27-year-old YouTube performer
and stand-up comic who delivers an amazingly assured film debut. The latter is a genuine 14-year-old, just out
of middle school, who is awkward and endearing and utterly convincing. He combines the eternal verities of
excruciating adolescence with the up-to-date stresses of ubiquitous smartphones
and social media. She combines
closed-in shyness with out-there bravado, and emerging beauty with residual
gawkiness, as only a person truly in the throes of that particular transition
could. She’s both tongue-tied and
articulate, full of understanding and without a clue. Josh Hamilton deserves a shout-out as her too,
too sympathetic dad. Overall, this winning
film offers a perfect mix of the amusing, the touching, and the cringe-inducing.
Lean on Pete (MC-80, AMZ) is the story of the close relationship
between a 15-year-old boy and the eponymous horse, but it’s hardly a heart-warming
tale – well-shot and well-acted, but possibly too sad to bear. Again the natural rapport between director
and teen actor is crucial to the film’s success, in this case Andrew Haigh (45
Years) and Charlie Plummer. The boy
follows his ne’er-do-well father from job to job around the Northwest (WY to WA
to OR), but finds a connection when they move close to a race track and he
starts to work for a shady trainer played by Steve Buscemi, with Chloe Sevigny
as a sympathetic but wised-up jockey.
But the boy’s supports are removed one by one, till he finds himself alone
in the desert with his beloved horse, hoping to reach an oasis of care. The film becomes a grim picaresque of a
desolate landscape, both natural and social, marked by flashes of beauty and
empathy, as well as calamity. Harsh as
it is, this film has heart.
P.S. Now I have to add another superb film that
falls under this rubric. Leave No
Trace (MC-88, NFX ) is writer-director Debra Granik’s follow-up to Winter’s Bone, and is likely to launch the career of magnetic teen actress Thomasin
Mackenzie, much as the earlier film did for Jennifer Lawrence. I don’t remember anyone who could do so much
with the quiver of her chin, and check out her native New Zealand accent in interviews.
She most believably plays the young teen daughter of the
always-compelling Ben Foster, a war vet with PTSD, who has turned survivalist
in the most basic sense. The two of them
live in a park near Portland OR , not just off the grid but way beyond it. Foraging outdoors all day, and sleeping
together in a small tent, they share a bond that is not at all creepy, but none
the less disturbing. Park rangers and
child services intervene and set them up in a house on a horse and Christmas
tree farm. Too much civilization for the
dad, so they head out for the territory, for (mis)adventures that are deep and
scary, but not horrific. While the
father is determined to leave no trace, the daughter is at an age when she
begins to want to make a mark on the world, and vice versa. Her interactions with other people and
animals are poignant with longing for connection, though her love for her
father is pure and persistent. We suffer
with her in the push and pull of emotions.
And we rejoice in the maturity of her choices. Lovely and thought-provoking.