Joel Edgerton again flexes his directorial and writerly muscles with his latest drama, one seemed aimed at awards season and, slyly, the current vice president. Boy Erased, though by no means one of the best pictures this year, is something I never expected to see on screen and therefore earned my respect and a whole bucket of my tears.
When we first meet Jared (Lucas Hedges), he's on his way to Love in Action, one of the more notorious "ex-gay" conversion therapy programs. The son of a proud Baptist minister and car dealer (Russell Crowe), Jared is taken by his beautiful mother (Nicole Kidman) to the program, which immediately establishes all sorts of arbitrary and problematic rules while sucking money out of the hopeful parents. The leader of the program (Joel Edgerton) commands the group of misfit queers as if running a drill camp, and it doesn't take long before Jared has second thoughts about this program. Even his mother suspects something is wrong, but the will of God seems notably difficult to identify. The story escalates to an explosive climax that is all the more powerful because it is based on a biographical memoir.
I knew this would be a difficult movie to watch, as I also went through conversion therapy for several years, but it's a masterful insight into the minds of everyone involved. Though Edgerton's screenplay is skimpy on explaining itself or delving deep into the theology or psychology of the process, it's clear that he understands the whole scenario far better than I would have expected from someone who never lived the experience. He's sensitive and acutely attuned to the minutiae of complex emotions that riddle everyone in the conversion process, so much so that the film becomes a master class in cinematic subtext and theme.
In my opinion, the film works best to understand the intentions behind someone who, like myself, freely chose to enter the program. That's something people seem bewildered by when the topic is brought up in conversation. Further, the film becomes a sort of nearsighted experience that forces us to live in the world of conversion therapy, albeit in episodic form. Everything is close, sensory, vivid, and sentimental (in a good way), and though Lucas Hedges has performed much better before, here he masterfully accomplishes the thankless work of becoming a sort of every-man, a blank slate that we can immediately project ourselves onto. It's some really difficult filmmaking from both Hedges and Edgerton, and ultimately wildly successful.
While the film will unfortunately be known as the "conversion therapy" movie, it's important to actively try to squash that. It is by no means a sweeping exploration of the process or its various forms; neither is it a treatise on morality or faith or family. It is -- quite simply, and for better or worse -- a biographical story that happens to feature the conversion process. It features a very specific form of the therapy in a no less specific time and place. It also, and this is where the trouble sets in, fails in its final act because it can't decide what to do with itself. After starting with a bang into the plot, it dwindles once Jared (SPOILER ALERT) escapes the program with his mother. This emotional sequence is followed by several dragging denouement scenes including news of the death of another victim, Jared moving away, and then Jared returning to confront his parents.
It doesn't quite work, this ending, because it intensifies the disconnect Edgerton clearly struggles with between biopic and drama. While the story may be true -- that the real-life protagonist escaped, moved to the Big City and had a Big Gay Life -- it's a story that died out in the 2000s and needs to stop being propagated. The queer destiny is not urbania, and phrases like "it gets better" and "wait til you leave this town" are infinitely damaging to queers who hear them. Keep your empty well-wishes to yourself, y'all.
Further, much like one of my complaints about Love, Simon (and I have a lot), the ending of this film loses its steam when it succumbs to a narrative that loses its stakes. When Jared returns, his mother welcomes him, and we see the change his struggles has effected in her. She no longer attends her husband's toxic church, and pointedly tells her son, "I love God, God loves me. And I love my son." While this may be true, it fails to add a few key elements -- "God loves my son" I whispered in the theater before realizing she had recited her entire line -- that might make a significant difference in hegemonic 2018 mindset. Later, when Jared does confront his father, the scene laboriously drowns in its own subtext, and I found myself completely bewildered by both characters, their dialogue, and the pacing. It's needlessly slow, hopelessly sentimental (in a bad way), and limits the scope of impact from the rest of the film.
Finally, the film skates cleanly over the lasting effects of conversion therapy -- and believe me, it's not pretty -- by effectively saying that Jared got out, he's fine now. But that's a matter of personal preference far more than anything else. Go see this movie. Go see this movie. Go see this movie.
Oh, and Nicole Kidman is just brilliant. As always.
IMDb: Boy Erased
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