Afterschool English Movie 2009
Cast and Crew
Starring: Ezra Miller, Jeremy White, Emory Cohen, Michael Stuhlbarg,
Addison Timlin, Rosemarie DeWitt, Lee Wilkof, Paul Sparks,
Bill Raymond, Gary Wilmes, Christopher McCann
Theatrical Release 10/2/2009
Rated: Rating Pending
Runtime: 2 hrs 2 mins
Genre: Dramas
Director: Antonio Campos
Reviews
Early twentysomething writer/director Antonio Campos makes a startlingly assured directorial debut with AFTERSCHOOL. Set in an exclusive Northeastern prep school, the film follows Robert (Ezra Miller), a confused youngster who spends most of his time watching videos on the Internet. Some of these are harmless, but some are much more troubling, including pornography and actual fights that have been captured on various consumer-grade video cameras. Robert himself doesn't appear to have violent desires, yet when he gets his hands on a video camera for a class project and starts becoming closer to fellow classmate Amy (Addison Timlin), he experiences feelings he has previously only encountered on a computer screen. During the filming of a class project, Robert unwittingly captures the overdose of two of the school's most popular girls--twins, no less--sending him into an introverted, despondent tailspin. Campos's film owes an obvious debt to the work of German provocateur Michael Haneke, and not only in its controversial subject matter. More directly, it's in Campos's ability to create a palpable sense of tension with the camera. Credit must be given here to cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes (WILD COMBINATION: A PORTRAIT OF ARTHUR RUSSELL), who uses a slowly roaming camera when necessary, but otherwise maintains a static, off-kilter frame, hinting at the dangers that lurk just beyond every corner. AFTERSCHOOL speaks volumes about the influence of the Internet and technology on our nation's impressionable youth.
Robert is a young American student at an elite East Coast preparatory school who accidentally captures the death of two classmates on camera. Their lives become memorialized as part of an audio-visual document intended to speed up the campus-wide healing process. But instead, the video creates an atmosphere of paranoia and unease among students and teachers.
As indulgent and preachy as his earlier Buy it Now, this drama shows the growing skill of 25-year-old writer-director-editor Campos. It's also packed with important themes that are addressed both artfully and hauntingly.
Rob (Miller) is a sullen sophomore at a New England boarding school, where he's dismissed as a poor kid by his rich classmates. His roommate Dave (White), who deals drugs in his spare time, won't even introduce Rob to the cool kids. When Rob joins the video class, he's teamed with the sparky Amy (Timlin) to make a film about the school. But they inadvertently record the nasty overdose of the school's most popular girls. As everyone's world comes undone, Rob maintains his aloof, awkward perspective, which unnerves the principal (Stuhlbarg).
Campos' terrific mix of imagery--pixelated YouTube clips, digital home video, crisp widescreen 35mm film--is extremely effective, establishing a strong point of view: we see everything through Rob's eyes. Even though he's utterly inexpressive, refusing to open up about anything to anyone (except in a brief phone call to his mother), we still feel like we get into his head. This is mainly due to the often off-centred camera work and a sharp editing style, which combines with Miller's remarkably contained, consistent performance.
All of the kids are eerily realistic teens (the adults are less convincing); we vividly feel their adolescent listlessness, interpersonal rivalry and tentative liaisons. And Campos shows things as they are, with an accurate and sometimes provocative depiction of high school that shatters most films' defanged fantasies. Conversations about subverting the rules and losing one's virginity have the ring of authenticity, as do some of the more intense dramatic confrontations.
Where Campos stumbles is in his tendency to moralise. There's an early suggestion that Rob's enjoyment of hard-edged porn might lead him into violence, and this threat of tragedy looms over everything that follows. Then after the overdose the school cracks down with its own Patriot Act, vowing to "never forget ... and be vigilant" so this doesn't happen again. These touches are rather heavy-handed, but they never overwhelm the central drama. Let's hope Campos realises that less pushing can actually be more effective.
As the question of sex education in British schools becomes a topic of controversy once again, it’s interesting to see a film which shows what can happen to young people when sex and sexuality become totally divorced from anything resembling love or respect.
Antonio Campos’ chilly, thought-provoking thriller paints a disturbing picture of American adolescence which has drawn comparison with Gus Van Sant’s Elephant but seems to me an even more effective and realistic examination of a world where intelligent and privileged characters have reached near-adulthood without having any real understanding of basic morality.
It opens with a rapid-fire succession of video clips on a computer, including Saddam Hussein’s hanging but ending with a long and very disturbing porn sequence. The watcher is Rob (Ezra Miller), a pupil at a well-to-do co-educational private school on America’s east coast. He shares a communal room with some equally prurient fellow pupils, including Dave (Jeremy Allen White), who’s also supplying him with drugs.
He misses his absent dad, his mother is distant in every sense of the word, he fantasises about his English teacher and has a crush on Amy (Addison Timlin), as well as lusting after the pretty and popular Talbert twins. The subject matter is predictable, but the way in which Campos tells his tale is original and constantly challenging.
Shooting mainly in long and medium shot and often cropping the frame, the effect is that the audience is purposely kept at a distance from Rob and all the other pupils, parents and teachers. The technique acquires another dimension when Rob is encouraged to join a video club, one of a host of afterschool activities designed to stimulate the pupils’ creativity. When the twins both die after taking contaminated drugs, Rob is put in charge of compiling a video memorial for them. But the audience is already aware of his actions on the day of their deaths...
The act of compiling the memorial illustrates the gulf between the conventional tributes and platitudes poured out for the twins and the reality of their lives and those of their fellow pupils. For all the floral displays and all-night vigils one gets the distinct impression that at least some of these kids don’t care about anything at all and that tragedy, like violence and sex, is simply an available commodity to be sampled and consumed with no thought to consequences or the feelings of others. A scene with the twins’ parents, where Rob clearly feels no sympathy or empathy whatever, is as powerful and chilling a piece of cinema as I’ve seen for as long time.
The adult characters get pretty short shrift too, with the teaching staff universally well-meaning but ineffectual, convinced that they’ve created a gang of really great kids and unable to come to terms with all the evidence to the contrary. It’s hard to find any particularly sympathetic characters (Amy, initially attracted to Rob as a misunderstood but sensitive soul and gradually realising the truth, comes closest). That’s clearly the point, but it does make the film’s overall effect somewhat one-note.
Campos is well served by his leads, especially Miller, who completely conveys Rob’s dead-eyed amorality and inability to connect. It’s overlong, continuing to reiterate its points for quite some time after the audience has got the message, and doesn’t offer much in the way of solutions. But for the most part this is powerful and challenging stuff, a welcome antidote to the "quirky but loveable" stereotypes of recent teen movies. It also makes clear that America’s dysfunctional youth aren’t just found in the redneck belt. These kids have everything – except a sense of right and wrong.
Engaging, provocative and superbly acted, this is an impressively directed drama that feels like a darker, arthouse version of a teen movie for the YouTube generation and marks writer-director Campos out as a talent to watch.
What's it all about?
Written and directed by Antonio Campos (whose debut feature Buy It Now was about a girl auctioning her virginity on eBay), Afterschool stars Ezra Miller as Rob, a withdrawn student who's ignored by all the richer kids at his New England boarding school and prefers to spend his time watching what he calls "little clips of things that feel real" (including porn and happy-slapping videos) on the internet. Meanwhile, Rob's roommate Dave (Jeremy Allen White) deals drugs out of their room but steadfastly refuses to introduce Rob to any of his friends, telling him that he's just not cool enough.
When Rob joins the afterschool video club, he's paired with Amy (Addison Timlin), an attractive girl he likes, for a school project and the pair become closer, especially after turning the camera on each other and asking personal questions. However, things change after Rob inadvertently records the shocking deaths of the school's two most popular students, who turn out to have been poisoned by cocaine that Dave probably sold them.
The Good
The performances are fantastic, particularly Miller, who manages to convey a wealth of emotion with the absolute bare minimum of expression – this is at times both heartbreaking and unsettling. There's also strong support from White and Timlin, while Michael Stuhlbarg and Gary Wilmes are great as the principal and the world's most useless counsellor, respectively.
Campos' stylised direction (composed of off-centre shots, seemingly random close-ups, back-of-the-head shots and so on) seems at odds with what's actually a surprisingly fast-paced and engaging plot. Similarly, the dialogue rings true throughout and there are some extremely provocative and disturbing scenes, such as a moment that hints that Rob's taste in porn may have done more damage than he realises.
The Great
The excellent script touches fascinating themes (notably the abject hypocrisy of the school staff) and also manages to convey a moment of pure emotional devastation more acutely than any number of Hollywood teen flicks.
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