Stars: Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, Joel Edgerton, Joe Alwyn
Director: Joel Edgerton
Oscar History: Hedges scored with the Globes (as did Troye Sivan's song "Revelation," but neither could sneak in with AMPAS)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars
(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes place initially in a series of flashbacks, as we see Jared Eamons (Hedges-all of the characters from real life were renamed for the film), at a gay conversion camp trying his best to heed his parents' wishes of becoming straight, examining what led him to be at this camp in the first place. Through flashbacks, we understand he is the "all-American boy" who has a girlfriend that he had recently broken up with, and at college he befriended a young man named Henry (Alwyn), who, also confused by his sexuality, rapes Jared and then outs him to his parents Marshall (Crowe) and Nancy (Kidman) in hopes of keeping Jared's silence about his own sexuality. Jared then comes out to his parents, who send him to a conversion camp, with Nancy more reluctant to do so than Marshall. The camp is run by a therapist named Victor Sykes (Edgerton), who employs violence, shame, and psychological warfare (at one point a boy is forced to attend a fake funeral for himself to insinuate that he'll be essentially dead if he doesn't become straight). The men attending the camp alternate between some who simply are trying to pretend to be straight long enough to get back to their real lives and those who are truly devoted to becoming straight, enamored with Sykes claims that they are evil but can be forgiven for their sins. Jared starts as a true believer, but becomes disillusioned as the film goes by, and eventually is saved from the camp by his mother. The film's ending has him writing an article about the time he spent in camp, and after initially rebuffing him, finding a way to reconcile with his father.
The movie is heavy, and should be. This is based on real-life, and even if they haven't always ended in conversion camps, the belief systems of real-life Marshall Eamons and Victor Sykes have had a profound effect on young LGBT men and women for decades, making them learn that something is "wrong with them" before having to eventually realize that that's simply not the case, and the bigotry of people older than them and in positions of authority have created systems that allows young LGBT people to be demonized from a very young age. Jared Eamons is not just a real person, but he also represents thousands of other real people who never had the chance to eventually have their voices heard. It's a testament to Edgerton's seriousness about this subject that he casts not only Hedges, who came out as sexually fluid after the film, but in supporting roles openly queer actors like Troye Sivan, Cherry Jones, and Xavier Dolan in key parts in the film.
Edgerton's acting occasionally succumbs to bombast as written (I've stated here a few times I'm not a big fan of his work as I find it too indulgent and surface-level), but I quite like his work as a director here, considerably more than I did a few years back with The Gift. There's a confidence that we only need to see a small portion of Jared's life to know that his father will eventually come around, and that his mother was basically already there when she brought him to the conversion therapy camp. The film is aided by strong work from the three leads. Hedges, who has made a niche for himself by playing sensitive young men who are trying to find their identity in the world, gives great care to Jared, forging a teenager raised in a conservative household who inwardly tried to fight who he was while outwardly showing a veneer of calm so that his parents would be proud of him. Kidman is also great in some confessional scenes about things she clearly had known for years about her son, but was afraid to say out loud out of fear/respect for her husband. And Crowe, who hasn't been in a movie of this nature in a long while, finds his inner star with a (smaller-than-you'd-think) role as Jared's father, someone who cannot compromise his own belief system, even though it's slowly eating away at him because he loves his son too much. That none of these actors ended up with Oscar nominations is a shame, and quite frankly a bit of a surprise considering the pedigree of the picture & the Academy's love for them in the past. The movie performed poorly at the box office, but like Disobedience is worth an investigation even without the awards love, as it's moving and an acting showcase.
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