We Are The Best!
knows exactly what it’s trying to be, and it does it quite well. As a study of adolescence and what makes
rebellion so appealing to the youngest of budding adults, the movie knows its
stuff, and it comes off as genuinely knowledgeable and heartfelt. Critics almost universally loved this film in
its festival circuit and U.S. theatrical runs, which should lend to its
credibility all the more. After all,
that’s why I chose to review this particular film in the first place. And yet, I feel pretty ambivalent about this
one.
Just to clarify, We
Are The Best! is a good film.
There’s really nothing particularly wrong with it, for the cast is
perfectly suited to their roles and the themes are resonant. In 1982 in Stockholm, two thirteen-year-old
best friends are really into punk rock.
They cut their hair short and don’t pretty themselves up like the other
girls; after all, punk is not as dead as everyone says, at least not to them. Fed up with being called ugly and strange for
not conforming, the girls start to vent their frustrations by writing and
playing their own punk song. They
realize that they’re not very musically talented, so they recruit a third
member, a quiet Christian girl with no other friends who is good at playing
guitar. The oddly-matched threesome grow
as friends and try their best to be as adult as possible, though their confused
feelings at any given moment may get in their way.
So yeah, the film portrays adolescence pretty accurately, from
the mood swings to the misunderstandings between well-meaning friends to the
use of creative outlets to cope with their burgeoning adulthood and everyone’s
insistence that they’re still children.
Yet I’m still pretty nonplussed by what should be a well-received
experience. Is it that I feel like this
has been done before? Spielberg is
perhaps the most notable director to show young teenagers as naturalistically
as possible, yet this film doesn’t share his penchant for youthful romanticism.
No, I think the issue is that the film doesn’t really hold
itself up on more than its theming. This
isn’t really a film about getting a band together or overcoming other peoples’
expectations; it’s a snapshot of a bunch of pseudo-kids learning to say “Fuck
you!” to everyone’s expectations of who they should be. And yeah, that’s fine and all, but it feels a
bit shallow in its thematic depth.
There’s some feminism interwoven with the primary message as well, but
it feels like the obligatory subtext inherent in having three female leads
rather than a fully fleshed out theme. I
guess I felt unsatisfied because I wanted the film to show me something more,
something new, something that hasn’t been the subject of just about every
coming-of-age story ever, albeit with a punk rock aesthetic this time around.
We Are The Best!
seems to me like a film that’s being praised right now upon its release, but
nobody’s going to remember it in the years to come. It hits the sentimental soft spots that the
film press really seems to gravitate toward, but it doesn’t do much with that
sentiment other than tell a fairly standard coming-of-age tale. I still think it’s a well-done film; I’m just
disappointed by its lack of ambition.
Is punk dead? Leave
your thoughts in the comments below.
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