ACING adolescence
‘Eighth Grade’ gets high marks for portrayal of middle school experience
The transition between junior high and high school is exhilarating, traumatic, funny and horrifying, and Bo Burnham’s “Eighth Grade” captures the whole experience perfectly. ❚
Elsie Fisher plays Kayla, who’s grinding through the last few days of eighth grade. She lives at home with her single dad (Josh Hamilton), and while they clearly love each other, they don’t seem particularly close. Part of that’s natural; part of it is because Kayla is socially awkward, and her dad’s not sure what to do about
her.
Kayla’s not sure what to do about herself. She makes videos and posts them on YouTube that chronicle her life and experiences, such as they are. Some are her versions of self-help advice. They’re honest and uncomfortable and most of them only get one or two views. She’s clearly making them for herself as much as for anyone else; she’s caught in that weird, in-between area of wanting to disappear and wanting everyone to know who she is and to share in her life.
And she ends each with an enthusiastic, “Gucci!”
She doesn’t have a lot of friends, and you fear no one would notice her at all if her classmates hadn’t voted her “most quiet” in the year-end superlatives. She attempts to rectify what she believes is this mischaracterization in, naturally, one of her videos.
Her videos make this something of an “of-the-moment” film, but it’s no gimmick. (Burnham was a popular YouTube personality, so he knows the territory.) The struggles here are universal and timeless. For instance, a popular girl invites Kayla to her end-of-school pool party under protest (her mom seems to have designs on Kayla’s dad). Kayla shows up feeling out of place and, in a weirdly fitting bright green bathing suit, looks out of place, too. No one pays much attention to her, with the exception of nerdy Gabe (Jake Ryan), and every molecule of her body is squirming with discomfort.
It’s uncomfortable, certainly, but at times a little funny. Most filmmakers would be content to leave it at that. But Burnham goes a step farther — Kayla slips off by herself and phones her dad, telling him to come pick her up because the party is over (it’s not; everyone is watching TV in the next room). This is heartbreaking, and so genuine you want to cover your eyes. Luckily her dad puts her off and arrives later. She doesn’t make a gaggle of new friends in the meantime, but she settles in with the crowd a little and watches TV along with them.
This level of slightly off-kilter realism can be so uncomfortable for some that it’s off-putting. There are many ways to get at the truth of a situation, but Burnham in “Eighth Grade”takes a direct route.
It helps immensely that Fisher is flatout great. The temptation is to say that she doesn’t seem to be acting, but that’s never accurate. Of course she is, and doing so with a kind of preternatural ease at portraying excruciatingly difficult situations. Kayla will meet an older girl, Olivia, who you pray is as nice as she seems, and she’ll have to navigate an ugly and potential dangerous back-seat situation with an older boy. In these scenes, and all the others, Fisher is brilliant.
“Eighth Grade” is the kind of film that feels essential, whether you went to eighth grade, you’re in eighth grade or you ever plan to be.