i am so proud of you and Afterschool

This weekend I saw two excellent movies.


The first really took me by surprise: Afterschool. Nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and directed by a guy helming his first full length movie, this movie hit me like a ton of bricks.

It plays something like Paranoid Park, but where Gus Van Sant would insert an emo song or skateboarding footage, director Bruno Campos inserts youtube footage. Rather than being cloaked in hoodies and low jeans, these characters wear preppie uniforms and loosened ties. The entire movie is a bit heavy handed in how it depicts today’s youth as media-saturated, catatonic monsters. But what it lacks in subtlety (never something I was all that interested in), it blows away with style. The angles are constantly off center and cutting off significant action (the director claimed this was to replicate security cameras and their ilk, i.e. this was done on purpose. Don't come crying to me that the director didn't know how to use a camera), the editing has an arresting rhythm, and the sound is punctuated by long silences of ambient emptiness. And there is one significant shot in general which reminds me of Michael Snow’s Wavelength in its cold detached depiction of sudden action in an empty room. This movie is all about the watched and the watchers. And it does it by making the audience active watchers – forcing them to participate or not.

For much of the movie, the main character’s face is regularly obscured. Either the camera is pointing at the back of his head, or it’s pointing in a different direction all together. As a result, the audience views much of the action as the characters does. The characters are very much like real high schoolers. Vapid, not in touch with themselves, self-obsessed, wildly insecure. I can only suppose that they’re also raised as Catholics considering how guilt-stricken they are. The main kid, Rob, tries to talk to his mom about his suspicions regarding his own innate goodness (this after watching a near snuff film on the Internet, masturbating, looking down his teacher's blouse) and his insecurities about how no one likes him, but she tells him to think about more pleasant things. His curiosity is left unanswered and unacknowledged - leaving him only to assume the worst about it. It’s hard not to ache for a character who is so alone, not even his own mother will listen to him. By the time he talks to a counselor (who tries to break the ice with a yo’ momma joke), the damage is done. The kid no longer wants to talk about it. Good thing too, since the counselor is not the friendly confidant he presents himself as. Worse of all it the head master, who mines the death of two students to squash any resistance the students may show regarding his new draconian rules.

This movie is not for someone who wants pretty teenagers agonizing over first loves and learning lessons about drug use. Gossip Girl, this isn't. It's not even Veronica Mars. This movie is chilling and disturbingly passive. In denying the usual tropes of drama, it makes the entire situation all that more affecting. This movie burrowed deep into my gut.

The other great movie I saw was the latest from Don Hertzfeldt, I am so proud of you. The “sequel” to everything will be okay, I have always admired Hertzfeldt’s knack for black, bitter humor. But as he continues, his short animations become more and more emotionally rich and significant. I am so proud of you is also Hertzfedt’s most sentimental yet – particularly the origin of the title. But it is punctuated by piercing personal insecurities. Insecurities so deep, they threaten to erode the main character’s very sanity. The first movie is about Bill’s slow decline in health. His mother and uncle arrive to see him through it. I am so proud of you explores Bill’s past (both personal and familial) and finds a disturbing trend of poor mental health and humiliation. His family tall tales are darkly humorous (which goes without saying in a Hertzfeldt movie) and regularly feature family members contracting deadly diseases, only to die in freak accidents. Or boys with hooks for arms inadvertently committing suicide. Most devastating of all is Bill’s mother. We learn she is not the competent caregiver she was depicted as in the first movie. Hertzfeldt’s youthful, dry narration is the perfect voice for all that is happening to Bill. Never maudlin or phony. The narration remains on an even keel, which perfectly reflects Bill’s own muted emotional capacity. It’s an accomplishment in itself to wring such pathos and emotion from a twenty-minute cartoon, but to do so with a cartoon full of stick figures is downright mind-blowing. Ever since 2005’s The Meaning of Life, Hertzfeldt has been reborn as a filmmaker of melancholy magnitude – pondering life and death, sanity and insanity, purpose and uselessness. In creating a character made up of straight lines and eternal indifference, Hertfeldt may have created the classic character for our times (note the hyperbole). 

Both Afterschool and I am so proud of you depict lives in constant doubt and fear of making an impact on their world. These are tragic figures locked in their own head. I’m admitting more about myself than I should in saying that I completely identify with these characters. I can’t wait to see what both of these directors do next.