Chain Camera

Saw Chain Camera (thanks, Nina!) It was really raw. The concept is this: highschool kids are given cameras to document their lives. The resultant footage is edited together with an emphasis on letting the kids control their own image. Some of the results are awesome, as with Tim, a pro-wrestling enthusiast who is adorable and Amy, the epitome of a band kid. At other times it's quite troubling, as with Jesse who roams the streets while his mother drinks or with Manuel the academic super-star who talks often of losers and failures who are beneath him. I was most upset with Ethan's segment, the kid whose "friends" and then family cruelly mock him for being a kissless virgin. Poor kid.

At the end, at graduation, the class valedictorian gives a rousing call to arms (kind of) against institutional apathy which is great. Notice this though: although the crowd is cheering throughout her entire speech, their cheers are loudest when she reaches an ironic "life's not fair, get used to it." Her point is that this apathy toward the state of the world is holding us back, but the kids merrily cheer this very apathetic stance, revealing that they can't yet tell tough talk from cold cynicism. This movie is just full of little moments like this that reveal how adult and yet juvenile these kids are. There's a lot of meat here. I wish it were a little more 'prepared' and a little safer. This movie shook me up a lot, but in all the right ways. It was fascinating.