Eighth Grade - 2018
Ah, middle school. We remember it well, don’t we? The time of growth that it contained for us. Puberty (yikes!). Nascent feelings of independence and sexual curiosity. Moldable personalities taking shape as we search for the influences of media, adults, and peers who will tell us just who we are. But, do we really remember it? Really?? Or do we repress quite a few of the real life details because they’re just too painful, embarrassing, confusing, or just plain icky for us to recall them?
Well, Bo Burnham would probably argue for the latter. In Eighth Grade, he makes the powerful statement that adolescence is a lot less like the joyful singing and dancing of High School Musical and a lot more like Captain Awkward Stands on the Brink of Adulthood (no, that’s not a real film).
Words that would be apropos in describing Eighth Grade are cringeworthy, painful, and above all, awkward. Far from the beautiful put-togetherness of the aforementioned musicals and the tightly boxed teen archetypes of the John Hughes’ master works of the 80’s (Yes, I love them too), REAL adolescence is excruciatingly hard. And it is likely harder NOW than ever before. Still, Burnham strides confidently into this modern maelstrom, beginning his picture with a close-up of his protagonist, a slightly pimple-faced regular girl in her last week of middle school. She is, of course, filming something for social media. A series of YouTube videos, in fact, which portray a confident girl telling her peers all about how to “be yourself” and push out the bad influences.
When the camera stops rolling, however, we get to know the real Kayla. She’s shy, stumbles through her words constantly, can’t look her peers in the eyes (even when she has the moxie to confront one later on. Spoiler alert. Sorry.), is as unsure about boys as they are about themselves, and has the world’s most caring dad. This same dad (played expertly by Josh Hamilton) also, unfortunately, happens to be the world’s worst person at communicating just about anything. So, we sit back, we squirm, and we watch Kayla navigate scene after scene – talking to cool kids, attending a party, fighting with her dad, hit on by a neanderthal, meeting a helpful high schooler, dreaming of the future – on her way to finding her true self.
Burnham’s verisimilitude is as astonishing as his compassion for his heroine, who let’s face it, is/was really all of us in some way or another. There is no GRAND ending, no whiplash transformation, but there is evolution aplenty and some of the finest dialogue penned in 2018. The film also offers powerfully relevant observations on the golden handcuffs that are social media and the sense and care of self that it engenders in our youth.
If you need more, watch for two things in the course of the film – the incredible musical piece by Anna Meredith as Kayla enters the party and a scene between Kayla and her father late in the picture. It is here where the facade finally comes down, Kayla at last admits to herself what we’ve seen in her all along, and Mark recognizes the power of presence and finally finds a few authentic words to help her on her journey. Maybe we don’t want to remember these years of our lives. But then again, maybe a journey this authentic is well worth the ride.
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