Eighth Grade, Bo Burnham (2018)

Eighth grade tells the story of Kayla who along with all the horrors of growing up, suffers from crippling shyness. This is a truly awkward and awkwardly true film about being a teenager and the strangest of social situations; middle school.

Although the film is about teenagers, I don’t believe its audience is necessarily intended to be teenagers; it speaks greatly to the adult who has lived through the terrifying experience of growing up and faces it candidly, and standing in a position of hindsight and maturity, we are able to experience the movie as a sort of catharsis. The way it empathically handles the most seemingly trivial of situations is eloquent and accurate, acknowledging, that to a teenager these moments can be palpably scary and important. And to all people who experience anxiety alike.

“Be yourself” is the first advice piece Kayla gives to an audience of imaginary peers on her Youtube channel. It’s such a common cliché that Western culture more or less intuitively has accepted it as gospel. Kayla’s refreshing innocence for the time being permits her naivety. What follows then however, is a string of scenarios in which Kayla struggles with her own regurgitated advice.

It is quite satisfying to watch a film expose the farce of such quasi self-help phrases like “Put yourself out there”, “Being confident is a choice”. These aren’t really very practical lines of advice, but rather more like bumper stickers that are thrown around on social media to present an image of self-awareness and togetherness but altogether make us more aware of the need to be a certain person for our peers.

What makes it all worse is the modern trope of social media. Burnham is perhaps sending out a warning to parents of the new generation whose children are born into a hyper-reality. For so much time is spent presenting yourself online, almost as a retreat, that it becomes a confusing and anxious experience to actually present yourself in the real world- as the real world is nothing like what people show on social media.

Kayla is played by Elsie Fisher, 13 years old, who gives an effortless performance; easily the most precise performance I’ve seen by someone that age to the extent that I feel the camera has found a girl and followed her round rather than made her the star of a movie. There are moments that feel unrealistic however and exaggerated for the purpose of increasing the cringe-factor. Nonetheless, the movie speaks for all shy people out there, perhaps helping those who are not so shy to understand what it feels like. There are definitely moments when watching Kayla, you want to shout at her, “just say something, anything- why are you making things so difficult for yourself”.

But, by the end, Kayla articulates quite accurately her feelings of nervousness, as like the butterflies you get in your stomach before going on a rollercoaster and we realise that shyness is not really a choice but an affliction.

Despite this unappealing message, there is an optimistic overtone to the film as just after Kayla burns all her hopes and dreams in the form of a time capsule she made at school, in a very emotional and pertinent scene, her father gives a touching monologue telling of how much admiration he holds for her. The film seems to be saying, we may not be exactly the way most of our peers or social media hopes we should be but we can be for at least someone in our lives. We are reminded of this in the final scene as well when Kayla goes for dinner with the boy she met at the pool party. Burnham portrays delicately the boy's Asperger's and shows him to be particularly more merciful and kind than any of the other neurotypical middle schoolers. He accepts and appreciates her for who she is; quiet, timid, kind.

Conclusively, the movie tells us that life is not as we see it on social media but often times, dull and we cannot all be achieving great success and be proud of ourselves for overcoming things all the time. Sometimes we are insecure and life is a tragedy and we don’t know what to do about it but what is important is that we have people that love us and we will get through it because of them. Though I felt like cringing almost throughout the entire hour and a half, what culminated was a highly touching movie that humbled me.