Boy Erased

Garrard Conley’s 2016 memoir Boy Erased has been adapted into a rather static film by writer/director Joel Edgerton.  Jared Eamons (Lucas Hedges) is the son of Marshal (Russell Crowe), a methodical pastor who speaks softly, and bright upbeat Nancy (Nicole Kidman) with big bleach-blond hair.  Living in Arkansas, Jared is raised in the Baptist faith.  His parents are distraught to learn their son is gay after a fellow classmate pretending to be a counselor, outs the boy.  Upon confronting him, he admits that he “thinks about men”.  He is subsequently sent to conversion therapy.

For what sounds like a harrowing set-up, Boy Erased is a surprisingly dispassionate picture.  The drama is built around Jared Eamons and his tenure at Love in Action, a gay conversion therapy program.  Director of photography Eduard Grau relies on stationary shots.  The colors are drab.  The tone is somber and bleak.  All of which effectively inhibits the drama.  While at this reform school of sorts, Jared is under the guidance of Victor Sykes (Joel Edgerton too).  He is the program’s head therapist and cult-like leader.  Victor is assisted by a stern tattooed enforcer named Brandon (Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bassist Flea).  Apparently his responsibility is to intimidate the subjects into heterosexuality with his menacing presence.

Jared attempts to fit within the guidelines of the program.  The group is asked to detail their family tree and associate hardships with each person.  Drugs, alcoholism, gang affiliation, criminal behavior, and pornography are the options.  He struggles to assign problems to his family members.  In group, students are compelled to get up in front of the class and openly confess their sins.  A mandatory exercise requires Jared to talk to a chair as if his father were present and explain why he hates him.  The implication being animosity toward one’s father is the root of homosexuality.  “But I don’t hate my father” he explains.  In other areas, Jared is remarkably adept. The boys line up for a batting cage where they hit baseballs ostensibly to make them more manly.  He has no problem doing this.

While there, Jared meets several other students.  There’s big, quiet Cameron (Britton Sear) who plays football.  The cynical-to-change Gary is played by musician Troye Sivan.  “Fake it till you make it,” he advises supportively.  Jon, portrayed by director Xavier Dolan (Mommy), is a man excessively frustrated to make the treatment work.   There’s also Jesse LaTourette as sad, shy Sara, one of the few women in the program.  We only get very cursory introductions to these people.  Understandably, each individual lacks the opportunity to make an impression as a fully well-rounded individual.  All, that is, except the star.

Lucas Hedges’ performance is genuine. The actor seems to have a knack for choosing films that get Oscar nominations. Since 2016 he’s appeared in 3 Best Picture nominees: Manchester by the Sea, Lady Bird, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. The 21-year-old actor has a youthful sincerity that keeps us invested.  He’s genuine although there’s an ambiguity to his performance that keeps the viewer at arm’s length.  He’s a soft-spoken but utterly self-possessed young man.  He doesn’t have trouble asserting himself when he must.  The drama is set at therapy.  However, the tale frequently uses flashbacks to detail moments in Jared’s life that give the events leading up to his placement in this facility.  These are the moments that incite emotion.  We get a glimpse of his life in the past.  There’s girlfriend Chloe (Madelyn Cline) who encourages him to go further sexually, a boy named Henry (Joe Alwyn) who would be a negative force in his life and art school student Xavier (Théodore Pellerin) who would be a positive presence.  Each of these vignettes is mildly more interesting than what occurs in his treatment sessions.  Yet – with one exception – very little of it is revelatory.

Boy Erased means well, but dramatically it’s inert.  The counseling meetings aren’t particularly shocking.  Most of it is quite restrained.  A mock funeral where a student’s parents are invited to attend so they can mourn over their still living son’s gay self is admittedly creepy.  That’s a rare instance where this chronicle slapped me awake.  Yet Jared is a well adjusted young man.  He doesn’t seem overly tormented about attending therapy for most of the picture.  He’s emotionally detached.  There’s very little excitement to extract from the events or the main character.  A singular moment where he defaces a bus-stop advertisement of a male model is a cathartic display that says so much without dialogue.  More of that, please.  A display of resistance occurs, but by then it’s too little too late.  Nicole Kidman predictably gets her showcase where she becomes the object of audience applause.  If she does get a Supporting Role nomination, that’s the sequence to highlight on Oscar night.  The biggest twist of the entire picture is ultimately revealed in the notes of an epilogue.  The “what happened to” one major character got an audible response in my theater.  It’s an unanticipated turn of events.  Perhaps that story might have inspired a more spirited film.

11-08-18