The High School Years: "Raw and Still Unfair"

Karen Durbin:

HIGH school can be hard to shake. Some people never make it out of the cafeteria; they’re still trying to find the cool kids’ table. With “American Teen,” opening nationwide on Friday, Nanette Burstein can claim a certain expertise on the subject. This movie earned her the documentary directing award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and set off a bidding war. It’s also something of an exorcism. Ms. Burstein was co-director, with Brett Morgen, of two highly regarded documentaries: the Oscar-nominated “On the Ropes,” about three young boxers hoping to fight their way out of poverty, and “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” a portrait of the flamboyant Hollywood producer Robert Evans. But the impetus for "American Teen" was more personal: her own intense high school experience two decades ago in Buffalo.

To make the 90-minute film Ms. Burstein moved to Warsaw, Ind., and, deploying multiple cameras, gathered 1,000 hours of footage as she and her crew followed four 17-year-olds through their senior year at the town’s large, modern high school. The students could almost be the template for a John Hughes teen pic: the pampered queen bee Megan, whose imperious will to power masks a terrible secret; the basketball player Colin, who must win a sports scholarship or forgo college for the Army; the gifted bohemian Hannah, ready to break away but terrified that she may have inherited her mother’s bipolar disorder; and the lonely band nerd Jake, funny and appealing but afflicted with vivid acne flare-ups that complicate his wry, determined search for a girlfriend.

To watch these real teenagers is to see egos and identities in raw, volatile formation; on the verge of entering a larger world, they are reaching for a sense of self.

Wall-e (for it's brief look at assembly line education and cultural homogonization) and the controversial Idiocracy (for its look at ongoing curriculum reduction initiatives) are also worth watching.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at July 21, 2008 4:33 PM
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