Eighth Grade brings its viewers into the life of rising high school freshman Kayla (Elsie Fisher) as she winds down her last year in middle school before embarking on her journey into high school. Kayla, who lives with her single father Mark (Josh Hamilton), is introverted and shy, wishing she could be part of the “cool” and recognized for being something other than the quiet girl that keeps to herself. The film attempts to allow us to see what life as a young teenager is like through the eyes of one.
Eighth Grade does a superb job of translating the emotion of the adolescent experience onscreen. As we watch the depiction of the social hierarchy of middle school and Kayla’s resulting struggle with wanting to fit in, to trying to impress those she perceives to be the in-crowd, to the anxiety of being in awkward social situations, to her hair trigger temper in dealing with her father, the reality of all these situations and feelings is stark and hearken back to the realities that many of us faced as young people slowly leaving childhood behind and having to deal with the complexities of no longer being young kids. One example is Kayla’s attendance at cool girl Kennedy’s (Catherine Oliviere)’s birthday pool party. Kayla has craved acceptance into Kennedy’s circle, but the combined anxieties of trying to impress and having to go to the pool in a bathing suit ended with Kayla falling into her old habits of awkwardness and isolation. She ends up spending most of her time alone or with Gabe (Jake Ryan), the only kid willing to attempt to make conversation with her for more than a second. In one of the year’s most tense scenes, Kayla is left alone in a car with an older high school boy, attempting to pressure her into taking her shirt off. While Kayla’s resistance to his efforts does seem at odds with the way that the rest of the film portrays her as being desperate to satisfy others in order to seem cooler and be accepted, it is a good illustration of how adolescents can at times be in a rush to have experiences they believe they are more ready for than they actually are. As Kayla transition into a high schooler, we are shown that some of her childhood innocence remains.
The film concludes with Kayla meeting up and hanging out with Gabe, as they eat chicken nuggets and awkwardly bond over some of their mutual interests. This end note on the film encapsulates the solution to Kayla’s loneliness and need to fit in, and therefore the loneliness and need to fit in that extends to all burgeoning teenagers that the film was attempting to explore and speak for. That solution is the need for people to find their own cool; find the people with whom they click, the people that choose them, and be “cool” together. As young people, craving to belong is a natural part of growing up and the social stratification present in school lends itself to young people wanting to belong to the group perceived as being at the top of the totem pole. But as we mature and become more comfortable with ourselves and who and what we are, we come to value being around the right people in the sense of how they feel about us and how they make us feel about our true selves, rather than how they cause the outside world to view us. This valuable lesson and essential aspect of transitioning from adolescence to adulthood is displayed well in this film.
Elsie Fisher turns in a good performance and is able to easily carry the film mostly by herself as the script demands. She is believable as a young girl trying to find her way toward reconciling who she wishes to become and who she really is. Josh Hamilton also delivers as her single father, trying his best to navigate her burgeoning womanhood and complex feelings as a middle-aged man who has experienced none of these things and has no woman that has had these experiences to turn to for advice for both he and Kayla.
While Eighth Grade is an accurate portrayal and character study of the emotional rollercoaster of life as a 14 year old, the film is not as interesting as it is true to life. What I appreciated most about the film was its universal depiction of the complexity and issues surrounding young teenage life. Eighth Grade takes place in a modern setting but the emotions it explores were just as applicable to 14 year olds in the 1980s as they are to 14 year olds today. Many adults today like to attribute the concerns that teenagers have with their body image or the problems they have with socialization to social media and technology, but this film reminded me that these issues predated the Snapchats and Instagrams of the world and are instead reflective of the trials and tribulations that teens in the Western world have, and have always had, as they mature. While a lot of the portrayal of the feelings of early teenage life is well executed, the story itself never quite matches up to the process of how it is told. First time writer/director Bo Burnham shows a good understanding of how to convey emotion and feeling in his big screen debut but also room to grow as a storyteller. Still, the mix of Eighth Grade’s positive and negative aspects make this film feel more worthy of a night in watching Amazon Prime than a trip to the theater.
Image: A24
