"Unsettles without illuminating, marred by narcotic pacing and a blank lead performance."
-Justin Chang, VARIETY"It's both a supremely controlled exercise in form and tone and an intriguing exploration of the ways new technology intersects with age-old questions of dominance, control and individuality, particularly in the school setting."
-Andrew O'Hehir, SALON.COM
Similar to the themes of DEMONLOVER and the pacing of CACHE, AFTERSCHOOL is a deconstructed thriller examining the possible effects of new media's impact on young minds. For centuries society has been question its relationship to entertainment and violence and AFTERSCHOOL continues this interrogation through the YouTube generation. No one would argue that Campos is navigating new territory, but his direction is assured and thought-provoking. In his first feature film Campos demonstrates a degree of clarity lacking in most debut filmmakers. He is a perfect example of an American filmmaker inspired by and in conversation with the New European Extreme. Haneke is a notable influence on Campos as both seem preoccupied with the effects of the new media landscape and its own preoccupations with violence. A more disturbing version of Catcher and the Rye, AFTERSCHOOL taps into the fears associated with new media and the negative aspects of its interactivity.
“After School”
ReplyDeleteThis film really freaked me out. Even the opening montage with the baby, the cat, and the girl getting strangled disturbed me and that was the very beginning of the movie. Even though this movie really did disturb me I thought it was really beautiful. I thought that the camera work was on point through out the entirety of the film. I loved how it held on shots a little longer then normal. It really added something for the audience that was unexpected. I also liked how they did not always show the person who was talking they mainly stuck to the reaction of who they were talking to. It made me think about what they were saying even more, because we you do not have the visual of the person actually talking it makes you listen closer, because often the visual helps to understand what someone is saying. This happened a lot when Robert was talking to the guidance counselor and the filmmaker realized that the audience did not need to see the guidance counselor it was more about what Robert’s reaction was to what he was saying.
Another thing that I thought was an important decision made by the filmmakers was to never show Robert’s home life. By not showing his home life it made him a much more mysterious character. Through out the entire film I wanted to know who his parents were and what type of home he was raised in, but the filmmaker never gives it to you. The audience is able to detect little things about what his home life is like. For example, the fact that they sent him away to boarding school says something. I am not exactly sure, because I was never sent to boarding school, but I could be that they care about their son’s education and this school had a lot of merit or it could be that they do not want to deal with him so they shipped him off to get him out of their hair. Also the filmmaker does not even show the parents at all. For example when Robert is on the phone with his mother you never see her only hear her so it does not give you a lot, but the fact that he is obviously so unhappy and she says, “don’t say stupid things like that” speaks volumes for where the mother stands on helping her son out in a difficult time. Also, the fact that the parents do not insist on their son coming home after he has experienced a death right in front of his face makes me really question them.
As far as the original video that he made I thought that it really showed his interpretation of the twins, and the fact that people were basically scared of trying to be their friends. I hate it when someone passes and everyone is like oh my god I was their best friend they were the greatest person to ever live, when really like everyone else they had extreme faults. The ending video was just a short montage about how amazing they were, but it wasn’t honest. The truth of the matter is that they overdosed and died from doing drugs the end, but I guess the kids needed to see something inspiring so it made sense.
Afterschool
ReplyDeleteOverall, I enjoyed the film. I think it should have been made more clear whether it was Dave's fault that the girls died. We are lead to believe that it is Dave's or whoever's fault, and then we see Rob suffocating one of the struggling sisters. That was a really freaky twist, and it made me wonder Rob's motivation for doing so. We are made to feel bad for Rob for most of the film, for example the scene where he is on the phone with his worried mother. I thought that it was a little random to just throw in that Rob covered the girl's mouth and killed her, even though she was dying already. You could argue that he put her out of her misery because she was visibly suffering. The whole death scene was very peculiar to begin with, especially Rob's reaction to the panicking girls. The camera angle was really interesting, and was shot like a documentary which made it feel so real and it was actually a very chilling scene. One scene I was confused by was when Dave throws a tantrum in the middle of the night and awakens Rob. I was wondering if we are supposed to assume that he is racked with guilt over the twins death? We are made to dislike the character of Dave, for example when he is mercilessly making fun of a student who's sister he claims to have had sex with, he is shown sneaking in various drugs, and he tells Rob that he isn't cool enough to hang out with him. I didn't like how he never really gets punished, and experiences any consequences of his really horrible actions. I really loved how the film was shot, and the camera movement, especially the slow pans.
For all the ambient noise present in Afterschool, it was a strangely quiet film. For a great deal of the film, it is difficult to understand what people are saying. And with many of the shots, the lower half of the face was cut off, making it impossible to even attempt to decipher.
ReplyDeleteThe film reminded me of a kiddie-coaster. It would be steady and still for a great deal of time and then every once and awhile there would be a bump: the twins’ death, the roommates’ fight, etc. I am not saying the film was boring. But it is understandable why the average American filmgoers might not pay eleven dollars to see it.
There were more obviously funny moments in this film then in any other we have watched. All of which seemed to highlight later events the needed to feel more dramatic. For example, the principal’s first speech where he talks about what is good for the students. We later find out that he neglected the therapist’s warnings about the troubled Talbot twins, which was one of the factors leading to their demise.
The ambiguity of the film was also disheartening. I like for my films to have answers, and this one only raised more questions. I felt like there was a great deal of open ends left when the credits roll. I wonder what happened to his roommate, his girlfriend, the therapist, and the principal. The principal who should have been fired for his neglect. If he was told to leave the school for a period of time, why does the audience never see that?
It is interesting to see how Robert becomes immortalized in his own vice, with both the death of the twins and his hallway brawl. His acts follow him, at seen in the final sequence where the camera turns on him again as he is framed by the portraits of the dead twins.
I thought the film did an incredible job of telling the story through the eyes of the lead, Robert. Thus, Robert's distortion of affection can be felt through the lack of tenderness in his mother, his attraction to the grotesque, and his relationship with Amy. On their first intimate encounter, his confidence arises in the position of camera operator, mimicking the fetish oriented fantasies he aligns with. He is fascinated with death, and naive in his application of that fascination. Although we do not know for certain his involvement in the deaths of the Talbert sisters until the final scene, we do suspect his enjoyment of their suffering when he chooses to let the girl die in his arms. I found myself wanting him to call for help, and painfully shocked and chilled at his tender cradling of the girl in her final moments of suffering. He sees his life as a constant web video, and feels guilty for finding pleasure in other peoples pain. Perhaps he finds pleasure in his own pain. Robert lacks tenderness, displayed primarily when he has sex with Amy for the first time. He takes advantage of her innocent curiosity with sex in a time of grief, and displays no emotional need for physical tenderness. Perhaps his parente never hugged him, told them they loved him, and bought his affection with the click of a mouse. Well made film. Slightly a disgusting look into modern American youth. For the most part, great acting.
ReplyDeleteThis was an interesting movie, but far from entertaining. I know that's not the point of a lot of these movies, BUT I'M A VIEWER DAMMIT, GIVE ME SOMETHING! A lot of these films seem to be totally against engaging the audience in more ways than just graphic images, and this film did the same thing. I did an experiment and painted a wall right before I watched the film, and during the slower parts the wall was way more interesting. The slow pacing and insanely long shots of the film just completely took me out of much of the film. I get it, it was like how the kid edited his film about the girls, so there's a commentary there on whether the kid made this movie, and who is the filmmaker, and who is the audience, but I didn't need to watch this movie to know there is messed up stuff on the internet, and that white upperclass kids probably have nothing better to do than look at it. The main character Robert was intriguing, and did keep me fairly interested, but he seemed like such a flat character, I didn't get any growth or change in him throughout the entire film. I wanted more depth out of his character, he seemed just like a stereotype troubled kid who we're supposed to believe is like those kids who snap and go on a shooting spree, apparently because of ineffective parenting, and videos of cats playing the piano on the internet. And I understood how the school played a role as a total anti-supportive community for a kid like this, but I got that this kid was "troubled" in the first 5 seconds, and that his school and friends sucked in the first 5 minutes. I feel like there are much more complexities involved with things like this, and I feel like I understood every single character and situation and what was gonna happen all within about 10 minutes. The ineptitude of every other character in the film, coupled with Robert's complete submissiveness to the ineptitude just made this film frustrating. In short, I don't think this film was "Bryton" material.
ReplyDeleteWhile I too agree that the there are many other factors that play into troubled youth, I do think that this film hit many of the key factors. From the beginning I felt that this kid was going to kill someone, which he kind of did. The film opens with a very graphic and violent video, which was later explained. The boy was in a pursuit of REALITY. He liked those videos on the faux-youtube site because they were real and he like the graphic porn because the guy in control of the camera put unexpected fear into the pornstars, which made it "real". The reason the boy edited the tribute to the twins the way he did was because he did not want exactly what the final video was, a fake video claiming how beautiful, sweet, and aspirational the girls were, when in truth they were drug addicts. I think that he was not a character I like but I do think the director did a good job of making me think I knew where he was coming from.
ReplyDeleteThe film really does remind me of our youth today. Kids who feel so empty and bored with life that they turn to violence and drugs to make things interesting for themselves. As an RA on campus, I will be the first to tell you that Rob is the mirror image of many of our peers on campus. Of course not all but definitely a small portion.
I have to agree with all the complaints in class about the ridiculous framing and sound. There were some points where it really got under my skin and I just wished that the camera would move to a more centered way. It’s not that I didn’t get what the director was trying to do, I just thought it was really annoying and just took me out of the movie even more cause it just became a distraction after a while. And I don’t really wanna sit and watch a movie while being aggravated by the camera. Nevertheless, the story was interesting, and the characters and themes were certainly thought-provoking.
ReplyDeleteThat ‘producer’s cut’ of the memorial video was actually kind of ugly. In that, because of the contrast given against the director’s cut, seeing all the falsities behind it, the second video just seemed really, really in bad taste. It just didn’t ring true. Everyone on the video seemed really pathetic, not to mention the majority of people who didn’t even know the twins, and the fact that they all magically seemed to have forgotten the fact that they died doing drugs. I don’t know, it was realistic in the sense that I’ve seen videos like this in school before, and for that I give the movie credit. Nevertheless, this movie still rubbed me the wrong way. I don’t think we needed to see the reverse shot of him suffocating the girl, and the overwrought visual choices just came off as pretentious.
I understand the director's want to try and capture reality in a movie. However, if I wanted to see reality I'd go outside. The idea of two girls dying from bad drugs was compelling and did help me to get through the movie. The story managed to be believable and not to farfetched. The story was definitely the highlight of this film. Although, it wasn't enough for me. I had problems with many of the shot choices. While some show that this director does have knowledge of cinema other shots were deliberately awful for whatever reason. If he explained it in the movie somehow perhaps I would feel differently, but at times I couldn't emerge myself in the world because the awful perspective kept pulling me out. The slow pacing was also killer in this movie. I felt it had no purpose except to reflect the pace in which actual life happens. zzzzzzz. Sorry I fell asleep. I usually enjoy reality in movies. When I don't think a film makes sense in the world it has created this usually upsets me. However, this movie was so real and boring at many points throughout that I wanted to watch a movie to save me from my boredom. Campos is clearly a Haneke clone, but can't manage to pull it off with the same finesse. To be honest I felt as if Haneke barely got away with it in some of his hits. It takes a true master to do well in this style of film. A master which Campos is not. He does have potential though.
ReplyDeleteClearly this director is heavily influence by Haneke. The static camera moves only for slow pans, revealing bits and pieces about who the characters are, or what their perspectives are.
ReplyDeleteI was extremely disturbed by the opening porn scene for exactly the same reasons the main character was intrigued by it: it felt real. It was a pivotal scene, that the director made several references to later in the film.
All in all I enjoyed this one.
I really liked this film’s distinct style of framing. Though at times it was a little frustrating that someone’s head was cut out of frame, it appeared as though the camera was stationary on a tripod, like real-life events were being filmed. It created a cyclic sense that Robert was becoming another character in the videos like the ones he watches on the Internet.
ReplyDeleteWhile I did enjoy the cinematic style, the content deeply disturbed me. I have a hard time believing that the way Robert went about interviewing the parents of the girls who passed away would ever happen in real life, as it was incredibly insensitive. The girls seemed to be objectified, and it was difficult for me to watch such a personal tragedy be treated as a mere event to be made an example of. In fact, most characters throughout the course of the film displayed minimal emotion, which I do not think portrays the reality of teenage life.
So the style of the film (cinematography, sound) stood out most for me and was also my biggest complaint. Some movies repel audience by gruesome imagery; this film repelled me by gruesome framing. Cut-off heads? Check. Sound volume that changes from scene to scene? Check. Completely random noises and unfixed ambient sound? Check, check. This film really had the makings of a film student failure, except that the director is supposed to know what he's doing.
ReplyDeleteThere's of course the argument of intentionality, that the film is supposed to be like the YouTube videos that the main character watches--but is there anything in the film to lend credibility to the director's skills? There were definitely some more refined scenes (though only slightly so), where the intent of framing is apparent. For instance, when the boy is talking to one of the adults in an office and they are facing each other, both occupying the screen to show us their profiles: that's not bad, but it's still mediocre. I think that if a director is going to set out to make a film for public exhibition he is obliged to bring some aesthetics into it (even the most visually shocking of the films we've seen often incorporated a certain beauty). Bad art doesn't deserve privileges of good art.