Adolescence
Typically, I will heartily avoid things that are highly recommended to me. No, I don’t know why I’m like that, because generally I end up liking whatever is suggested. I heard about this film and read a tiny bit about the story before actually watching it, and that was a mistake because I formed an impression of the main character. It doesn’t make a lot of difference but now I’ll wonder what I might have thought.
Barely past dawn one fine morning, a couple of tense cops wait and chit chat. Suddenly they, and ten thousand other black clad and armed officers burst into a family home and arrest the wispy young son. He’s only thirteen, but he’s arrested for murder. This four part series doesn’t concentrate on the gory murder, but it closely follows the path of the son and his family from those first loud, chaotic minutes.
And they are very closely followed, with a camera that takes every episode in one long, long shot. The camera goes everywhere, from one character to another like they’re on a tether, and this is one of the brilliant ways the director keeps the action going without being terribly obvious about it. I didn’t even notice that feature until about halfway through the first episode and then couldn’t stop marveling about how this was affecting an otherwise straightforward story. At one point the action moves from one location to another by way of flying over town, and I couldn’t believe how seamless the transition to drone was. Technically, this is an awesome series. But there is also the aspect of how it affected the actors, who couldn’t flub a line once in forty minutes and get all their weeping and acting and shouting and walking all over a building while occasionally the camera operator will pass right in front of them and maybe linger for a moving closeup. There are people wrangling traffic on the street and the many extras doing their thing and making sure the actors got their lines right and making sure all the fight choreography goes off without a hitch. It’s a lot. And I never noticed a glitch.
The story is pretty straightforward and there is a lot of dialogue. The writing is sharp enough to keep things interesting, and I was struck at the profundity of the lady cop complaining that all the media will be about the boy and the girl who was killed will be forgotten. And that’s exactly how the series went. Hopefully they were that profound on purpose and hoped we would notice and not they, like, forgot her. I did learn a little something about the power of emojis, and how even those of us old people – like the 50 something year old cop in the series – who think we’re modern have been left so far behind we can’t even see the dust anymore.
If you’re looking for a slam bang action show, this is not for you. There are a few loud and frenetic moments but mostly it’s the grind of investigating a murder and a whole lot about how people feel about it, where the blame is, and struggling to maintain professionalism. I do recommend seeing this, because it’s really well crafted and acted, especially considering the boy playing the suspect is in his first movie here. The subject matter, the why of the murder, is probably the most lame aspect but totally believable in today’s climate. See this if you want a dramatic, technically challenging story.
Triggers: some foul language and raised voices, no gore
Available on: Netflix only so far (sorry)
LINKS:
CFR: In Addition
I first knew Cranky was going to review this when she sent me a text saying “I’m watching another thing you would hate.” LOL I love my communications with Cranky!
I do not know if I would watch this. I have heard and read about it. I don’t know if I can watch it and maybe one day I will.
From what I have heard and read this is a story studying young men and our cultural isolation of them. I have for decades thought and hoped that men would liberate themselves from what society says a man is to feeling like the men they are. Some men are big and classically masculine according to our culture. Great! Some aren’t. There are many ways of being a man and all are valid.
My biggest thought is that men are taught they are men is they are NOT women. Well since women, and non-binary people, are capable of the whole range of human behavior, this is going to be hard for our culture to assimilate. So men: Please know you can be and do and experience the entire range of human emotion and experience. That is being a man and being human.
Also I think our sexism is so deeply entrenched it messes with all of us. I hope one day doing things a woman does and being a woman will not terrify men. Or women. Or non-binary humans.
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