Boy Erased etches sketch of family versus faith into film history

By Katherine Monk

Being queer and all, I thought I kind of knew about all this stuff: Religious parents who feel so shamed by their gay children, they try to “cure them” of their perceived “affliction” and enrol them in militaristic hetero-camps. I’ve read the stories of trauma. I’ve also seen deeply personal documentaries. It’s all terrible: love turns to shame, self-loathing and division. It’s also, tragically, predictable.

Boy Erased tells that story. Yet, Joel Edgerton’s inspired adaptation of Garrard Conley’s 2016 memoir took me entirely by surprise. Indeed, it was a revelation. For wrapped within so many fulfilled expectations of intolerance, the film generates a power greater than fear and more noble than hate through a central character’s continuing willingness to love.

Jared Eamons (Lucas Hedges) was brought up the faithful, God-fearing son of a Baptist Minister (Russell Crowe) and a believing, big-haired Mom (Nicole Kidman). He’s good at school. He goes to church. He’s on the basketball team. He has a girlfriend.

Jared satisfies all expectations. Yet, he feels incomplete and conflicted. When he heads off to college, and meets another Christian with similar struggles, everything in Jared’s world starts to fall apart. In the hopes of keeping his family together, he agrees to what his father asks: an intense round of “conversion therapy” lead by a therapist named Victor Sykes (Joel Edgerton).

Perhaps because Edgerton is directing as well as playing the emotional foil, he surrenders to an ugliness in Sykes that creeps with sadistic glee, forbidding any real shot at sympathy, but providing a skilled antagonist for our budding hero, so beautifully played by Hedges.

The young actor is just about omnipresent these days, thanks to his noted turns in Manchester by the Sea, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and Lady Bird, not to mention Jonah Hill’s Mid-90s and his father, Peter Hedges’s, Ben Is Back.

Boy Erased presents his biggest challenge yet, because not even the character is entirely sure who he is. He’s become so accustomed to playing the straight part, he’s awkward and unsure in a gay one. Oftentimes, that adds up to an unreliable hero, but in Hedges’s hands, Jared feels like the most solid presence in every scene. Even when he’s wavering between choosing his own truth, or pleasing his parents, Hedges infuses every moment with a gentle humility and Retriever-eyed earnestness that makes you love him. Even when he can’t truly love himself.

Even when he’s wavering between choosing his own truth, or pleasing his parents, Hedges infuses every moment with a gentle humility and Retriever-eyed earnestness that makes you love him. Even when he can’t truly love himself.

The more you care, the more vested you feel in his outcome, and those of the other would-be inmates at the sexual correction facility. Every young man and woman behind the chain link fence has admitted to feeling homosexual urges, and every one of them is looking for a way to reconcile their faith with real, undeniable feelings.

Some are playing along with the game and talking about their new feelings for the opposite sex, others are having a harder time lying, while some enjoy watching the others squirm. Canadian Wunderkind writer-director Xavier Dolan plays one of the latter, and makes the most of his Children’s Hour thespian opportunity. Britton Sear plays Cameron, a high school football player trying to put up a strong defence, and Troye Sivan plays Gary, a guy who’s figured it all out — and tries to give Jared a few survival tips by faking repentance.

Edgerton is chorus master to them all, and he lets them to hit every note in their range. And then some. It’s an ensemble performance that works as a dramatic choir. Hedges solos the sustaining narrative melody while the supporting players offer counterpoint and harmony.

Edgerton is chorus master to them all, and he lets them to hit every note in their range. And then some. It’s an ensemble performance that works as a dramatic choir. Hedges solos the sustaining narrative melody while the supporting players offer counterpoint and harmony.

The most important of these other voices belong to Jared’s parents, Marshall (Crowe) and Nancy (Kidman). We can feel how much they care for their son, but we can’t help but notice how faithfully they interpret scripture, and put a fundamental concept of Jesus Christ front and centre in their daily lives.

Edgerton never caricatures the faithful, nor does he canonize the queer. Everyone on screen, including the somewhat over-the-top Sykes who, ironically, is based on a very real person, is given a certain benefit of moral doubt.

They’re all just people, and because they’re all just people trying to be who they are, the more tragic the philosophical abstracts become because they’re crushing true expression. They’re crushing soul.

Edgerton never caricatures the faithful, nor does he canonize the queer. Everyone on screen, including the somewhat over-the-top Sykes who, ironically, is based on a very real person, is given a certain benefit of moral doubt.

Perhaps the beautiful thing about Boy Erased is that it never makes it about religion, or an argument about Biblical interpretation.  It’s not a movie about Christianity, but it affirms the power of forgiveness. This is not a movie about being gay, but about being who you are. This is a movie about how we choose to treat each other, and how we choose to solve problems. Not every storyteller can find the universal in the seemingly specific, yet Edgerton and the talented cast create a brilliant rainbow of emotion through a single source of light: Love. It can refract, and it can bend, yet the colours only grow brighter — and the spectacle more intense — because the characters are cut so well. A true jewel of cinema and the very best kind of religious experience, Boy Erased doesn’t announce its greatness, it simply brings you to your knees and leaves you awestruck by its power.

@katherinemonk

THE EX-PRESS, November 9, 2018

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