The boys in blue ... and red
Doc about teen leaders illuminates state of the union
BOYS STATE
★★★★ of 5
Cast: Steven Garza, Ben Feinstein, René Otero, Robert Macdougall
Directors: Amanda Mcbaine, Jesse Moss
Duration: 1 h 49 m
Available: Apple TV+
Three summers ago in Austin, Texas, a thousand or so rising
U.S. high school seniors participating in a mock legislature for youth leaders made national headlines, voting to secede from the union. It was, of course, a toothless vote, made during an annual gathering known as Boys State, one of many such programs for precocious male adolescents run by the American Legion in nearly every U.S. state, along with its sister organization Girls State.
Nevertheless, documentarians Amanda Mcbaine and Jesse Moss thought that development — entirely theoretical but perhaps telling about some disturbance in the zeitgeist — was interesting.
The very next year, they arranged to make a fly-on-thewall documentary, Boys State, about the 2018 Texas assembly. Centring on the campaigns of two fake political parties, Federalists and Nationalists, and the subsequent, culminating election, the film presents a camplike atmosphere that turns out to be, in some ways, not that different from what you might expect: a bit of rowdiness/ silliness — someone floats an abortive party platform banning cargo shorts — mostly conservative, lots of talk about gun rights, and an overlay of nerdy intensity that swings between endearing and grating.
But the four boys on whom Mcbaine and Moss focus bring some nuance and surprise to this fascinating look at leadership-in-training.
There’s Ben Feinstein, a bilateral amputee on prosthetic legs who is a model of perseverance, good cheer and slick demagogy; the liberal, fish-out-of-water transplant from Chicago, René Otero; and Robert Macdougall, whose honesty about his own embrace of political expediency — another word for lying to get elected — is less refreshing than alarming.
But the film really revolves around Steven Garza, the Nationalist candidate for “governor” who bucks the teen gathering’s conservative leaning with a platform of universal background checks for gun purchases and other leftie planks.
Garza’s earnest, heartfelt approach to politics — even one that is wholly make-believe — provides the film’s heart and soul.
Whether he wins is not the point of the film, although the results of the election, presented with all the suspense of a real election-night nail-biter, deliver the documentary’s most powerful emotional punch. For some, it will be cause for despair; for others, hope. It seems clear which side Mcbaine and Moss fall on.
Boys State is a portrait of the country in microcosm: divided, but not yet irredeemably lost.