High schools don’t teach students about the reset button. Somehow
that’s left out of the curriculum.
One day high school is all there is — football games, prom,
spirit week, homecoming dances — and then graduation ctrl-alt-deletes the whole
thing, like a self-destruct sequence to obliterate the evidence of the previous
four years. The most popular high school students do not grow up to be the most
popular adults. The class clowns and wacky weirdos do not grow up to be
society’s outcasts. The social standings change. Upward and downward mobility
after graduation effectively shuffles the deck.
I thought a lot about this phenomenon during the beautifully sad
novel-turned-film The Perks of Being a
Wallflower, about a group of eclectic outcasts who are unafraid to flaunt
their personalities amid the class warfare of American high school. I knew
people like this in my own high school experience and this movie made me miss
them on a profound level. So much of high school is about conforming to the
most popular caste that the unique individuals get lost in the shuffle. This
film is dedicated to them.
The movie — stunningly directed by the book’s author, Stephen
Chbosky — begins with a letter written to a nameless, non-existent friend. The
letter writer is Charlie (Logan Lerman), an incoming freshman who has enough
emotional turmoil about high school to write to an imaginary therapist/pen pal.
The hazing at Charlie’s 1990s-era high school is especially bad, which leaves
him without any friends until he is befriended by the eccentric Patrick (Ezra
Miller) and the sweet Sam (Emma Watson). They are seniors, but they take a
liking to Charlie and his aloof awkwardness. A lesser movie might have had Sam
and Patrick pity Charlie and offer their kindness out of self-serving charity,
but that is not the case here — these teens care deeply for their new friend.
Chbosky’s gentle composition and a music-heavy soundtrack allow
the film to open and expand at its own pace. Some of the beats you will recognize
from other high school movies: Charlie gets a crush on Sam, there are scenes at
dances and football games, some of the characters use drugs casually (with
repercussions) and the friends flirt and fight with the school’s more popular
crowds. It has the look and feel of a typical high school coming-of-age story,
but it is decidedly much more unique and special.
The nucleus of all this is Charlie, who is so delicately written
and acted that I kept waiting for him to fall over and shatter. Lerman,
previously of the Percy Jackson
franchise, is wonderful and I liked how he allowed Charlie’s range of emotions
to grow as the movie commenced forward with new friends and new experiences.
Watson, Hermione from all the Harry
Potter movies, and her lovable sprite of a teenager are angelic and pure —
“Welcome to the island of misfit toys,” she tells Charlie. I kept seeing shades
of Kate Hudson’s brave Penny Lane
performance from Almost Famous,
another character who falls for the nerds while sleeping with jocks.
Really, though, the show would not be the same without Ezra
Miller as the semi-out gay friend Patrick. This is an Oscar-worthy performance.
He’s an expressive showboat of a character — for his senior prank he pulls an
epic stunt on the woodshop teacher — yet he’s given many moving moments,
including one where he bares his soul, is wounded by his own embarrassment and
then struggles for reconciliation … all within one touching scene in a park.
His attitude is flamboyant and loud, but these are not byproducts of his sexual
orientation; it is Patrick being Patrick. For a movie to get these tricky
things right is remarkable.
The movie is full of comedy, like when Charlie waxes poetic after
eating the pot brownies, though it does take some more serious turns in the
second half, when Charlie starts to feel terror and worry seeping into the
oasis of his new life. He shares much of this to his invisible pen pal as he
types letters that will go unanswered. There is a twist late in the plot that
I’m not entirely sure the film earned the right to introduce; maybe the book
developed it better. I did appreciate the small things that made these teens
unique, including the midnight Rocky
Horror showings, an inventive Christmas gift exchange and Charlie’s first
girlfriend, who he only dates because he’s unsure how to tell her no.
This is a terrific picture; the best movie for teens since Juno. It’s only opening at two Valley
theaters, both of them far out of the West Valley
