Boy Erased English Movie
Actor Joel Edgerton's directorial debut, the 2015 film The Gift, was a surprise present to audiences looking for something more from their Hollywood thrillers. A suspenseful tale of male egos and their destructive power, it dealt with its themes with a lot of subtlety without ever compromising on the thrills and gave us an eye-opening performance by Jason Bateman.
So, my excitement to watch Joel Edgerton's follow-up to the The Gift was palpable but alas, Boy Erased turns out to be too simplistic for a film tackling a heavy-duty topic such as gay conversion therapy and Catholic guilt.
Boy Erased follows a young son of a Catholic priest who is sent to a Christian institution that specializes in getting the "gay" out of your kids. The film switches between his relationship with his parents, his time at the conversion therapy and his fellow enrollees, and flashback subplots exploring his past that has led to this present.
The biggest problem with Boy Erased is that it is a film more concerned with unmasking the horrors of conversion therapy rather than a deeper peek into the mind of a clearly suffering young gay man who is made to go through such atrocities. Simply put, we're made to see the terrible things that happen to him but we don't really get to know much about his feelings through all of this and the screenplay ends up feeling more like a collection of incidents.
Unfortunately, there isn't even enough anger in Edgerton's storytelling to effectively shame the religious acts and make these incidents infectiously angering to the audience as well. There's not even a properly explored subplot, including the backstories of all the other kids at the therapy. It's just an extremely milquetoast treatment of all characters and story elements, which is a shame because Lucas Hedges gives a strong central performance as the titular boy erased.
He carries the film ably through the separate "incidents" between all the flashback "incidents" and gets us to empathize with him, even if the direction and screenplay don't. He oscillates wonderfully between being the obedient, Christian son and the teenager giving in to temptation to feel the normal that he wants to be. Russell Crowe looks the part of and surprises with his restraint as the Priest who refuses to look past the religious values that shun homosexuality, even if it's your own child on the receiving end of this stubbornness. Nicole Kidman feels like the wrong choice for the role of the mother divided between the two men in her life and seems to be a case of dream-casting rather than a perfect fit. Edgerton gives himself the role of the teacher at the therapy school and does well to humanize a part that is supposed to be the object of the audience's hate.
In the end, it's still a simple story told with enough sensitivity and empathy to touch your heart at a few points and the performances are mostly convincing. It may not have been the incisive and layered film that I was hoping for but it was a heartfelt story that should play well to crowds looking to shed a tear or two at a theater this weekend.
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