Eighth Grade
I wasn’t a girl making the transition from 8th grade to high school, but I was an awkward kid. I had more friends than Kayla Day does in Bo Burnham’s wonderful new film, “Eighth Grade,” but that was partially because my parents had me get involved in Boy Scouts when we first moved to Georgia 30 years ago, and those friendships had a big impact of softening the blow of moving away from the life I knew in Ohio. Even then, though, I did not have a social life. I wasn’t invited to parties or to go “hang” at the mall. And while this became a bit more frustrating in high school, scouting and band gave me plenty of time around people, and helped me form friendships that continue to this day.
Let’s get the most obvious part of “Eighth Grade” out of the way- the film’s R-rating is another abject failure on the part of the MPAA to be able to properly discern what material is perfectly suitable for teenagers, and which should be restricted. Yes, there are a handful of uses of the F-bomb, and yes, Kayla does look up videos on oral sex, at one point, but the way both things are handled in the film are not exploitative or gratuitous but precisely in the nature of the story being told. It’s one of those times where, as a theatre manager, you hate having to enforce the R-rating policy because, there’s nothing there. I wonder if a film about a male character going through a similar journey would have resulted in the same rating.
The second most obvious part of “Eighth Grade” that needs to be discussed is the fantastic central performance by Elsie Fisher as Kayla, the heroine of the film. When we first see Kayla in the film, she is making a video for her YouTube channel, in which she discusses topics such as confidence and being yourself and putting yourself out there. It’s clear from listening to her talk about the subjects that she doesn’t really know how to do or be any of those things in her non-YouTube life, and we recognize that pretty early on as she is heading into the last week of eighth grade before matriculating into high school. As well as she tries to project herself on YouTube, it doesn’t really transition over to her daily routine, wherein she emulates the way more popular girls like Kennedy (Catherine Oliviere) project themselves on social media, and pines for a “cool kid” like Aiden (Luke Prael), while spending nights at home with her father (Josh Hamilton), who is trying to be a good single parent, and almost all of her time on her phone. In the next week of her life, Kayla will find herself faced with situations that will change the way she is moving forward.
Fisher’s performance is, quite possibly, my favorite one of 2018 thus far. She doesn’t hit a false note as Kayla, and makes her someone we feel protective of, and easily identifiable in, from the first moment she is on-screen. Our empathy goes with Kayla, and we are both moved by the way she tries to put herself out there, and worried of all the ways it might backfire on her. The film is not so much about big life changes that mark a lot of teen movies, but putting a microscope to Kayla’s life, and seeing how she handles herself. Kennedy is forced by her mother to invite Kayla to a pool party, but don’t expect a lot of familiar teen movie tropes to occur. Kayla manufactures a way for herself to talk to Aiden during an active shooter drill- which is weird to see occur during the LAST week of school- and it is a lesson to her in how boys think, although you worry whether she takes the right lessons from it. Another key moment happens after she befriends high school senior Olivia (Emily Robinson) at a high school shadow day, and is invited to the mall. There are a lot of reasons this sequence is one that stands out- like the moment when Kayla’s father is found to be keeping an eye on her, embarrassing her in front of her new friends- but it’s a moment when she is being driven home that will have the biggest impact, I think, and our protectiveness of Kayla is ramped up to 11 when she looks like she’s going to make some choices she may not be ready for. This leads to a final few moments where her and her father connect in a way they were unable to before, and she gets reassurances of her worth that she’s been waiting for from anyone. Hamilton is as honest a movie parent as has ever been written in a film, and the scenes he has really land with strong feeling and heart.
I couldn’t help but liken “Eighth Grade,” with its authentic look at life, to Sean Baker’s equally-impactful “The Florida Project” last year. Both films have young girls at the center of them, and father figures that want to relate to and care for them, but what really connects them is a sense of desire to place reality in front of a microscope, and see what makes these characters tick. The key difference between the two is that Kayla has more of an ability to take control of her destiny, whereas Moonee, who is only 6, does not. Both are painful looks at adolescence with hardships, but both also find hope instead of despair, more often than not. That is a credit not only to the actors at the center of each film, but the filmmakers responsible for both films.
