NEW REVIEW: "Boy Erased" (2018)

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“Boy Erased” (2018)

“Here he is, Jared. Your father is sitting here and I want you tell him how affected you are by him, and how angry you are. 

Tell him how you hate him . . .”

While I wasn’t a massive fan of Joel Edgerton’s directing debut, 2015’s “The Gift”, I nonetheless had an appreciation for Joel’s willingness to dive into a black-hearted, suspenseful drama that maybe didn’t land the punch that it swung for. Still, I was curious to see what direction stylistically Edgerton would go in next; for instance, would he do something wildly different, or he follow a similar path to hone in on his craft like, say, Ben Affleck?

The answer is really neither. Bits and pieces of “Boy Erased” harken back to the darker, harder-to-digest side of “The Gift”, but this time it comes in the form of a biography adaptation based on the life of Garrard Conley, a gay man describing his experiences about being raised in the South by his Christian-devoted mother and Baptist minister father, as well as the time he spent as a teenager at a conversion therapy clinic - the latter of which is the bulk of the film’s focus.  Undoubtedly, this serves as quite the bold move for Edgerton as a filmmaker still looking to create an identity for himself. Let’s be honest here, LGBT cinema has only just begun to make its way into the mainstream, and with a storytelling well of justifiable baggage from decades and decades of civil discrimination, it would be astonishingly easy to spew out of control bile all over the screen in an attempt to make demons out of true story oppressors. There will surely be a day when these stories will not have to go hand-in-hand with pain, but until that time, not everything can be “Love, Simon” levels of sweet.

Fortunately, Edgerton shows some true focus and necessary restraint, and despite the film still having some of the same rigidness that haunted “The Gift”, this film serves as a true step up for both the genre’s exposure to a larger audience and Edgerton as a director.

Note:  Names in the book, including Garrad’s, were altered in this adaptation.

As previously mentioned, the film begins with Nancy Eamons (Nicole Kidman) checking her son, Jared Eamons (Lucas Hedges), into Love In Action, a gay conversion therapy clinic. The film goes back and forth between this current timeline and spaced apart flashbacks that show the events leading up to Jared’s admission to the therapy. During these flashbacks, it shows Jared appearing like a perfectly normal, happy teenager that plays high school sports, has a steady high school girlfriend, and a job at a car dealership that his father, Marshall Eamons (Russell Crowe), runs outside of his profession as a Baptist preacher. When Jared is alone with his girlfriend, he shows signs that he isn’t entirely comfortable with the type of intimacy she desires despite playing it off like nothing is bothering him.

Nevertheless, Jared ends the relationship when he goes off to college, where he immediately strikes it up with another young man, Henry, with whom he shares some common interests. Late one night, it appears as though the two are perhaps going to spark a romantic moment, until it all falls apart when Jared’s new friend tries to force him into having intercourse; an act that so frightens Jared that it wakes his neighbors and the rape ends before it can begin. To make matters worse, Henry was also raised as a God-fearing teenager, so he’s afraid that Jared will tell everyone his secret and actually calls Jared’s parents posing as a college counselor to out Jared as homosexual. Jared desperately denies this claim to Nancy and Marshall initially, however he becomes frustrated under the weight of his own secrecy and announces his attraction to men. Obviously, this revelation goes immediately poor, and after some deliberation with fellow members of the church, Marshall declares that Jared must change his ways. Jared reluctantly agrees, and that essentially leads up to Love In Action, where homosexual men and women are told they must change to be accepted by God, and they are pushed and coached in morally grey ways to believe just that.

It’s not as simple as it sounds, but I will not spoil any of that. Take my word for it that some scenes are rather difficult to watch.

I have yet to read Conley’s memoir, and seeing as literature source materials tend to be more finely textured than their adaptations as a general rule, I can only imagine just how piercing it is given how poignant of a film Edgerton has created here. This story and the way it has been told on screen is designed to get under your skin and make your heart bleed – in balance. I think it’s really important to note that the antagonists are not menacingly evil. For instance, Marshall Eames is not a bad father, and Nancy isn’t a bad mother; they are simply terrified parents rooted deeply in their ideology and made rash decisions to “save” their son. Hell, even Sykes fully believes in that what he is doing is helpful despite being ignorant as fuck to the mental scarring caused by his “therapy”.

Granted, this all probably sounds like an elaborate excuse, and maybe it is to a degree, but if put into consideration the fact that big pieces of religion rely on fear to conjure obedience, it only makes sense that kind of fear would cause blind, irrational decisions. Edgerton truly does a great job at illustrating the imperfections of humanity in this film on both sides of the fence, and that makes a huge difference in its emotional impact. Not only that, but while flashbacks as a means of direct storytelling can sometimes be annoying, Edgerton made sure that the sequences wove together in a meaningful way leading up to the climax.

Now, this next part is a little strange for me to say as I am NOT her biggest fan for multiple reasons, but for something like this, proper credit is due: Nicole Kidman is near-perfection in this movie. She’s not at all like the things I normally complain about, such as being cold or fake-like, but instead wonderfully embodies a loving mother torn down the middle between doing right by her husband and doing right by her son. Crowe was a good as one would expect him to be, and Hedges continues to blossom into an exceptionally talented young actor; however, even though she’s not the story’s main focus, Kidman really did put in a show-stealing effort.

Recognizing that this is indeed a big step up for Edgerton as a filmmaker, he still has some work to do to reach any level of standout greatness. Again, there are moments where his direction is a bit rigid and mechanical, and oddly enough, the one character that in my estimation needed a little polishing was his own in Victor Sykes. I really want to explain that out as it is kind of important, but it’s apparent enough that you’ll know it when you see it. I also am not quite sure yet what kind of director Edgerton wants to be. His work in “Boy Erased” is competent and then some, but there’s nothing signature yet that I can put my finger on. I digress on that, though, because that’s another conversation for another day. Besides, Joel did a much better job this time around sneaking in some stomach-turning subtly that added some gravity to the already dark circumstances at Love In Action.

To wrap this up, “Boy Erased” absolutely lived up to the hopes I had for it. This is a fascinating time in both cinematic and cultural history as whole where stories like this need to be told, and more importantly, need to be told well. I feel everybody did their part to make that happen in this film, and I give this one a high recommendation.

“Boy Erased”: 9/10