Directed by: Joel Edgerton
Runtime: 114 minutes
Based on the 2016 memoir by Garrad Conley and adapted for the screen by Aussie filmmaker Joel Edgerton (who also directs, co-produces and stars in the feature), Boy Erased is set in a quaint town in rural Arkansas, where Jared Eamons (Lucas Hedges) is a young man quietly dealing with a crisis of sexuality.
The son of a Baptist pastor, Jared is bright, respectful and the God-loving type, but it’s clear that he’s unsure of the slice of Americana presented to him by his loving parents Marshall and Nancy Eamons (Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman): getting good grades, excelling at sports, working for his father, having the cute girlfriend, skinny dipping in the lake, ‘parking’ in cars, etc. We gradually see this unease and hesitation manifest in Jared’s behaviour. Despite his best intentions, Jared still feels at odds with the world around him and the walls of heteronormativity are closing in. Enter college. Jared takes advantage of this newfound freedom and begins his sexual exploration. Before Jared can process the full implications of this sudden awakening, a situation arises which results in him being outed to his parents as a homosexual, upsetting the idyllic balance of his Baptist family upbringing. After a hasty crisis of faith meeting, Marshall pleads with Jared and asks if he truly “wants to change.” When Jared relents under this pressure and accepts his ‘need’ to change, he’s quickly shipped off to a gay conversion therapy program, led by the imposing, fire-and-brimstone therapist Victor Sykes (Edgerton). And it’s here where the film’s empathetic rendering of Jared’s truly heart-breaking tale unfolds.
As a coming-of-age character drama, Boy Erased is a more-than-capable film. We feel and sympathise with Jared’s situation as he’s torn apart by a conflict of nature—a boy confused by urges, emotions and desires that he both doesn’t understand and struggles to resent for their apparent ‘sinfulness’. However, while Boy Erased certainly isn’t a bad film by any stretch, it ultimately didn’t leave me with a new or profound sense of insight, understanding or nuance of opinion. Walking out of the theatre and musing over the viewing experience hours later, I was left wondering exactly what I wanted this type of film to achieve or evoke in me as an audience member. Let me explain.
First, the good. With an ensemble of seasoned and new actors, the performances are all top-notch. Crowe and Kidman are venerable actors in their own right, and they bring a deep sense of gravitas to their performances here. Edgerton utterly disappears into the antagonistic role of Sykes, dominating his scenes with a calculating and penetrating gaze. However, the standout is definitely Hedges, who makes the character of Jared (based on Conley’s own personal experiences) feel distinct, human and vulnerable. After his Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in Manchester by the Sea, I’m shipping Hedges and Boy Erased for straight-up Oscar bait. While the inclusion of Flea (of Red Hot Chili Peppers fame) as the character of Brandon, AKA the program’s version of ‘The Ideal Man’, seemed like a weird choice at first, Flea’s intensity and street aesthetic helped to convey the dangerous notions of toxic masculinity within the narrative, and at times I swear I heard Fight Club’s Tyler Durden whispering in my ear (“Is that what a real man is supposed to look like?”).
Similarly, Edgerton’s direction in the film is great. After his work on 2015’s The Gift (which he also wrote, co-produced and starred in), it’s clear that Edgerton has a talented career ahead as a multi-faceted filmmaker. His visual style is measured without being overbearing, purposeful without losing emotion; small pushes and medium-framed shots are used for simplicity, while cuts for facial reactions at key moments help to build narrative tension and drama. There’s a scene around the film’s middle, where Jared sees a scrolling advertisement for cologne, complete with (of course) a half-naked, washboard-abs male model. This form of tease quickly goes from a forlorn touch, to anger, to rage and the catharsis of thrown rocks and breaking glass. Watching Jared release his frustrations in this way and scream “Fuck you!” to the night-sky and a silent God is powerful stuff indeed.
But now, the somewhat questionable. Edgerton make several choices with both the screenplay and direction that hinder the film’s thematic resonance. There’s a rape scene that’s necessary from a narrative standpoint, but also an extremely awkward, confronting and devastating sexual encounter. There’s Sarah (Jesse LaTourette), a young lesbian woman in a similar position to Jared at the program, whose character feels underdeveloped and mute. Sarah barely has any dialogue, and apart from some stilted scenes of her and Jared staring at each other, her character is unceremoniously dropped, and we ultimately lose any feminine perspective from within the program. There’s also an off-screen death that’s relegated to a brief mention and montage, effectively gutting the character of any real emotional weight. Yet perhaps most seriously, Kidman’s character Nancy is given a redemptive narrative arc that doesn’t feel earned and is clumsy in execution. While Kidman definitely sells Nancy’s concern and internal struggle with the cognitive dissonance of motherly love, ideology and adherence to patriarchal responsibilities, it all rings a little hollow in the end, as Jared is forced to be his own man and work things out on his own. Having not read Conley’s original memoir, I’m not sure if these hamstrung issues all came about in adaptation for the screen, or if they’re a result of sticking to the real story.
In the theatre, the poster for Boy Erased declared that: THE TRUTH CANNOT BE CONVERTED. Despite being a little on-the-nose as far as taglines go, it’s a statement that cuts right to the heart of this film’s central premise: that who we are as people, at the most fundamental level, cannot be accurately represented or articulated by traditional—and, as many would argue, archaic—dichotomies of gender and sexuality. As a film that exposes the insidious and harmful practice of gay conversion therapy for what it really is—a form of indoctrination, oppression and pseudoscience—Boy Erased is certainly a worthwhile endeavour. However, I found its delivery and messaging to be too passive and underwhelming. The film tacitly assumes that the audience already finds the practice of gay conversion therapy morally abhorrent and does very little to explain how and why this practice still occurs in our modern era. While people like Garrad Conley have used their experiences to champion the rights of the LGBTQ community, it seems unlikely to me that Boy Erased will do the same, in a way that is tangible or real—apart from scooping up some Oscars.
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