Eighth Grade

To be a 14-year-old girl is to exist in a strange state of lim­bo, caught between child­hood and the beck­on­ing adult world. The press would have you believe that kids today grow up too fast – they’re a new incar­na­tion of the ​“accel­er­at­ed youth” that Dou­glas Cou­p­land talked about. Films made about mil­len­ni­als and post-mil­len­ni­als by film­mak­ers tend to approach the sub­ject with a Jer­ry Sein­feld-esque ​“What’s the deal with social media?” slant.

Bo Burnham’s debut fea­ture Eighth Grade thank­ful­ly takes a more thought­ful approach when it comes to cap­tur­ing the real­i­ty of grow­ing up in the new cen­tu­ry. The film’s pro­tag­o­nist is Kay­la Day (Elsie Fish­er), who is in her final week of mid­dle school. Amid end­less scrolling on social media, she records vlogs with titles like ​‘How to be con­fi­dent’ and ​‘Putting your­self out there’ – iron­i­cal­ly, giv­ing advice on sub­jects she wish­es to mas­ter her­self. She’s unsure of her­self and her place with­in the social hier­ar­chy of her peers, yet her inse­cu­ri­ties are nev­er played for laughs in the way they are in so many oth­er gener­ic high school movies. Instead, Burnham’s approach is more sen­si­tive, more heartfelt.

Burnham’s com­e­dy cre­den­tials trans­late into scenes which show his ado­les­cent grow­ing pains, but the film belongs to young Elsie Fish­er, and Josh Hamil­ton who plays her sup­port­ive (if not ter­mi­nal­ly embar­rass­ing) father. There’s a ten­der­ness that under­writes Eighth Grade’s com­e­dy, ensur­ing we always laugh with Kay­la rather than at her.

Close-ups and over-the-shoul­der shots invite us into her world, as per­son­al and inti­mate as the video blogs she films in her bed­room. Fish­er encap­su­lates the awk­ward in-between of being 14, endear­ing and infi­nite­ly believ­able. In posi­tion­ing Kay­la as nei­ther des­per­ate­ly uncool or stag­ger­ing­ly pop­u­lar, Burn­ham has cre­at­ed a char­ac­ter who is much eas­i­er to iden­ti­fy with – the mun­dan­i­ty of her life is what makes Kay­la so captivating.

Burnham’s affec­tion for Kay­la paints her as extra­or­di­nary in a very ordi­nary way – small details such as a cre­ative­ly-dec­o­rat­ed shoe­box or post-its on her wall hint at her tal­ents and ambi­tions, but she’s nev­er larg­er-than-life. Eighth Grade isn’t about a major trans­for­ma­tion, just about many minor ones.

So much thought and care has gone into the film’s com­po­si­tion, from fram­ing Kay­la in the cen­tre or on the side­lines depend­ing on her con­fi­dence with­in a scene, to Anna Meredith’s syn­thy score. A scene in which Kay­la attends a pool par­ty host­ed by a pop­u­lar class­mate is framed as a ter­ri­fy­ing club scene with a thump­ing bassline, and when Kay­la sees her crush, the heart-stop­ping, stom­ach-churn­ing agony she feels is reflect­ed in the dub-step over­lay. The music is used as a way of express­ing per­son­al­i­ty and emo­tion, much in the way teenagers com­mu­ni­cate with playlists and pop-cul­ture ref­er­ences (and Eighth Grade’s got plen­ty of those too).

Cap­tur­ing the nature of being young at the present moment through a pep­per­ing of images, memes and cur­rent social media plat­forms might mean Eighth Grade is at the risk of dat­ing quick­ly, but it’s more use­ful to view these ref­er­ences as a sort of cin­e­mat­ic time cap­sule. The film speaks to a very spe­cif­ic peri­od in West­ern his­to­ry – we see this when Kayla’s class are lacon­ic dur­ing an active shoot­er drill. That’s just part of the Amer­i­can school sys­tem now.

It’s this sense of time­li­ness and time­less­ness which ele­vates Eighth Grade to great­ness. Although it is very much a film about being 14 in 2018, it speaks to a more uni­ver­sal ver­sion of teen­dom. Kayla’s expe­ri­ence with a pushy old­er boy in the back of an SUV and her fraught rela­tion­ship with her sin­gle-par­ent father reflect the per­ils of youth with a rare com­pas­sion, remind­ing us how frag­ile youth is, but also how opti­mistic and full of pos­si­bil­i­ty our for­ma­tive years can be.