Comedian, musican, writer, director, and 27-year-old Bo Burnham feels like an eighth grade girl. That's not me projecting, he's said so himself, and he wears his heart on his sleeve in his first feature film, Eighth Grade. His anxieties—which have caused him bouts of stage fright, crises of his identity and vocation, and literal panic attacks throughout his career—likely aren't too foreign to the average tween, or, frankly, anybody alive and aware of the world we live in. That seems to be why Burnham has chosen to tell a story about an eighth grade girl; because more of us can relate to her worries than we might realize. And he's on to something, because Eight Grade is one of the very best and most emotionally authentic movies of the year.
Specifically, Eighth Grade tells the story of Kayla (Elsie Fisher), a quiet but eager girl trying to navigate the social warzone of middle school. At home, she's an only child to a single father who, try as he might, can't seem to help but embarass her (but whose can?). At school, she tolerates her out-of-touch teachers and tries desperately to figure out who she can make friends with. In concept, it doesn't sound all too different from other teen movies, like Mean Girls and The Breakfast Club. But what sets Eighth Grade apart is Burnham's intimate perspective of what's going on in Kayla's head, which can be felt in every aspect of his filmmaking: claustrophobic closeups, an erratic and energetic score, and dialogue that deliberately stumbles over itself as if trying to find meaning amidst all the 'like's and 'um's scattered throughout a given sentence. The first minutes of the film include my now-all-time favorite instance of a script playing the word 'like' for comedy.
Burnham isn't doing all the work here, though. The film is chock-full of astoundingly spot-on performances from actual kids you've never heard of. No 25-year-olds playing 15, no A-list celebrity awkwardly inserted into an ensemble of no-names. Leading the pack is Elsie Fisher as Kayla, and she absolutely knocks it out of the damn park. She shows an impressive amount of patience and emotional range in almost every scene, but maybe the most impressive thing about her naturalistic performance would be unnoticeable if you didn't know that yes, all of those 'like's and 'um's and syntactic backpedaling are actually in the script, which says as much about young Elsie's acting ability as it does about Burnham's writing. Fisher is backed by a pitch-perfect cast, most notably her father, Mark, played by Josh Hamilton. Mark is Kayla's rock, as any good parent should be, though Kayla, being a tween, wants nothing to do with his awkward attempts at connection and support. Hamilton perfectly captures the dweeby lovability of a dad that teenagers can't stand, though I think, in real life, most kids would probably think Mark is a "cool dad," if she had any friends to see him. The rest of the cast mostly consists of actual middle schoolers who attended the school at which the film was shot, and they do an impeccable job. Nearly every scene has some relatable piece of adolescent nonsense going on, whether in the foreground or background; kids squirting water through their teeth, flipping their eyelids inside out, and stacking Crayola markers into some kind of polearm are things that I'm sure many can associate with those years, but that shockingly few films actually represent. Eighth Grade might actually be the most authentic movie about teens of all time.
Because the acting and writing take very naturalistic approaches to portraying teens, the editing, cinematography, and score are where Burnham chooses to flex his style. Tight shots of faces glued to phone screens and clips from Kayla's self-help YouTube videos show us how Kayla spends most of her time; she is a very lonely person, using social media as her form of surrogate socialization. Of course, most of the views on her videos are her own, and if her other accounts get as much attention as she gets at school, I can't imagine many are seeing those either. The shots that Burnham chooses display the sad reality of Kayla's life, without condescending to "what if phones, but too much" cynicism or belittling our protagonist. Hard cuts from scene to scene help kick us right along from one social embarassment or existential frustration to another, while maintaining the unforgivingly hectic pace of middle school. Burnham's greenness as a director shows in some places, particularly with the placement and pacing of some scenes, but for the most part, this feels nearly indistinguishable from a stylistic choice, and either way, it speaks to the earnest authenticity of the film. Additionally, British composer Anna Meredith brings a weighty electronic score, which has enough personality and range in itself to feel like its own character. It's one of my favorite scores in recent memory, which is saying something, considering my general preference for more traditional scores.
Eighth Grade has a lot to say, not necessarily about America's youth, but more about human beings in general. Burnham has said that he didn't set out to make a film about middle school, but rather about his anxiety—it just turned out eighth grade was the perfect backdrop for that. But to get too deeply into what the film wants to say would be to take magic out of the journey that Kayla goes on. It's safe to say, however, that anyone should be able to relate to Eighth Grade's dichotomy of comedy and tragedy, whether or not your youth was exactly like Kayla's. This is also a film that refuses cynicism, choosing instead to be compassionate with its subject and protagonist, and its a beautiful monument to social struggles that we've all had to deal with in some form of another. Kayla is one of the greatest cinematic heroes of the year so far, and her story is an absolute must-see. The film is rated R, but parents: take your kids to see it. As authentic as the film is, chances are that this movie won't show them anything they don't already know about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnesHAtSHzs&w=585