Coming of Rage

Dìdi (弟弟)

Girl, Interrupted

Hello there, children! While we are all trying our best to function normally in the barely-lucid liminal space between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I find that it is my duty to stave off the xmas extremeness while still maintaining a cozy vibe on this blog. So for this first week of December, I’m holding off on the holidays just a bit longer, to explore a different kind of warm, fuzzy film genre: the coming of rage film. Coming-of-age stories (or bildungsroman[s?], as your English teacher likely once referred to them) typically revolve around a youthful character or characters, on a journey of self-discovery and/or maturity. As I get older, as I make mistakes, keep learning more, but somehow understand the world less, I realize just how boundless this perspective of storytelling actually is. “Coming of age” can happen at any point in one’s life, multiple times, even. I think I did more aging in middle school than I did in high school, and I probably learned more in the year after college than I did while attending it. Life has many heartbreaking, inspiring, confusingly-confounding lessons to teach us before we pass into the next realm, so us humans are always going through growing pains. When I was rewatching The Lord of the Rings series for the first time recently, I realized that Frodo’s hero’s journey is a coming-of-age story, and that in the 20 years since I last watched these movies, I’ve done a lot of growing up myself. And I’m adult enough to recognize the nuances of growing, aging, developing, and how the films that depict these evolutions come in a myriad of flavors and tones and subgenres. On this blog, I’ve explored countless versions of the coming of age story—the sweet and romantic kind, the sexy and peculiar kind, the solemn and the funny kind, the queer and classic kind, and the version that I think I’m most drawn to, the subgenre that most-accurately captures the bizarre brutality of growing up, are those full of horror and rage. So tonight, let’s explore a couple of films that do not hold back on the horrors of youth, and let their protagonists come of age in the midst of all of their burgeoning awareness and subsequent rage. Up first is a film that I’ve been wanting to see since it came out earlier this year, a film reminiscent of Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade or Greta Gerwig’s Ladybird, and that’s Sean Wang’s directorial debut Dìdi. Dìdi follows 13-year old Taiwanese-American Chris Wang (Izaac Wang), also referred to as “dìdi” and “Wang Wang”, during the Summer of 2008, just before he heads off to high school. Now, I took three non-consecutive years of Mandarin Chinese (with my friend Anna who worked on this film shoutout Anna!!), so I know that dìdi (弟弟) means little brother, but I do not remember much beyond this. We’re immediately inundated with the aesthetic and pop cultural facets of the time—LiveStrong bracelets, iPods, MySpace, Instant Messenger, and the early interface of YouTube—an honestly pure moment in modern history that we see through the pure eyes of Chris. He lives with his mother Chungsing (icon Joan Chen), his older sister Vivian, and his overbearing Grandma (or Nai Nai) in Fremont, California, and they’re all anxiously preparing for Vivian’s upcoming departure for college. Chris and his sister Vivian have some of the most believably-authentic dialogue I’ve ever heard, as they fight over clothes, coolness, and every other juvenile point of contention. From just one short interaction of this family at the dinner table, the audience is given a crystal clear image of the dynamic of this immigrant family, who’s patriarch is still in Taiwan working a job, while his mother criticizes the wife who stayed to raise the kids. It’s a tough position for Chris’ mother to be in, and he definitely doesn’t make life any easier for her. Since I am the exact same age as Chris’ character, it was painful yet nostalgic to witness his youthful hijinks in 2008—making shitty videos with his friends and putting them on YouTube, lying about his age to make a Facebook account just so he can add his crush as a friend, and in general, being a terror to his family. I wouldn’t wish being a 13-year old girl on anyone, not even my worst enemy, but Dìdi shows another challenging perspective from this time, one that did the impossible job of humanizing a 13-year old, snot-nosed boy. This is mostly accomplished by Sean Wang’s tender and emotional script, but every single performance in this film is a knockout. Chris and all of his friends are just tiny menaces who are at their worst—only talking about sex, trying to sound black for some reason, and acting like the braces in their mouths are gonna get any action—so they reminded me very much of the boys I knew in middle school. It’s such a torturous, tumultuous time, where every kid is sort of testing the limits of what they can get away with, learning to use curse words, learning about sex and drugs and drifting away from certain friends, and in the process just feeling suddenly very uncomfortable in your own skin. These terrors, I believe, are universal phenomena, and Dìdi really proved this to be true. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to raise a teenage boy, especially in the age of the internet, but Joan Chen fulfilled this complex role perfectly, and reliably brought a tear to my eye as she expressed her love for her son. What I didn’t expect, was to be so moved by Chris, but I truly felt my heart break as his crush says to him, “You’re pretty cute, for an Asian guy.” I love when a film can present multiple layers and perspectives so effortlessly, and that’s exactly what Dìdi did, as it perfectly blended the tribulations of being young, being an awkward boy, being in an immigrant family, being and being a target of covert and overt racism. When Chris joins an older group of dudes who need a “filmer” for their skate videos, it seems like he finally finds a comfortable place to exist, but even this world introduces challenges and frustrations, and Chris can’t help feeling a bit like an outsider everywhere he goes. To me, Dìdi captured this isolating sentiment beautifully, and with more realism and heart than Jonah Hill’s Mid90s, another coming-of-age skate film. And while I didn’t expect to relate to Chris so much, I found him to be a very realistically-complicated and sweet character, who so desperately wants to be accepted in the shallow eyes of his peers. And his relationship with his mother is just so heartwarming and felt excrutiatingly-authentic, I couldn’t help crying as these two reconciled, after a period of rage. It’s not a loud or violent rage, but a quiet, simmering rage that comes from the shifting between parents and children—especially those enduring puberty. Every detail of Dìdi was thought-through and well-executed, as it immerses you back in time and makes you fall in love with this family. I simply loved it—for its awkwardness, for its bitterness, for its sweetness, for its commitment to telling an accurately-clunky but surprisingly-hopeful coming-of-age story. I only wish I had seen it sooner! And I feel the same way about tonight’s next film—a movie that people are always shocked to hear I’ve never seen, a movie with a cast so stacked, an aesthetic so dreamy, and a vibe so divinely of my sad-girl-tumblr-era that it seems foundational to my personality and yet it is brand new to me—James Mangold’s 1999 Girl, Interrupted. In the tumblr hey-day of the mid-oughts, I used my blog to air out all of the feelings that life, and my favorite media, gave me, which mostly resulted in the cringiest content you can imagine. This was also at a bizarre point in pop culture, where a shocking amount of young adult books and media revolved around mental illness and suicide. Coincidentally, this is when my obsession with the movie Heathers began, and my subsequent obsession with Winona Ryder blossomed. (I also had a whole blog specifically dedicated to Heathers and Heathers: the Musical, can you say NERD?) I dabbled in the teen-suicide genre, reading books like Looking for Alaska and It’s Kind of a Funny Story and Perks of Being a Wallflower, but I didn’t gravitate to this content naturally. So even though I was reblogging gifs of Winona Ryder smoking cigs in Girl, Interrupted, I didn’t bother to watch it. Now that I’m older, wiser, less-impressionable, but still wary of sad movies, I thought it was time to finally give this one a watch. Girl, Interrupted is based on the memoir of the same name by Susanna Kaysen, who documented her time in a psychiatric hospital in 1967, after being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. The film begins with a few fragments of memory, interspersed non-linearly, to the tune of “Bookends” by Simon and Garfunkel. We then hear the soothing rasp of Winona’s voice say, “Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue, or thought your train moving while just sitting still? Maybe I was crazy, maybe it was just the 60s, maybe I’m just a girl, interrupted.” From this moment on I was hooked, and I knew that even poignancy couldn’t stop me from finally enjoying this film. Winona plays Susanna, who is essentially forced to check herself into a psychiatric hospital after she chases a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka. 18-year old Susanna comes from an affluent suburb of New England, and while she is highly intelligent and self-aware, she is seemingly in denial about her depression and suicidal ideation. 18 is a tricky age to be, in any time period, but this film showcases how odd and stuffy it was to be a young woman in mid-century America, when the culture is telling you that you can be anything, but the reality of society is that you’re still expected to grow into being a “normal”, functioning housewife. This is also the era of patronizing medical language, where women were diagnosed with “nervous breakdowns” and prescribed “rest”, which is exactly what Susanna expects to get at Claymoore, but isn’t entirely what she finds. She’s quickly introduced to patients and nurses and therapists, played by a cast that was even more star-studded than I knew. Whoopi Goldberg plays the head nurse who is kind but always ready to put these girls in their place, Vanessa Redgrave plays the stern but wise therapist, Jeffrey Tambor plays the other, less effective therapist, Jared Leto plays a situationship of Susanna’s, and Mary Kay Place plays an uptight family friend. The patients in this ward are all diagnosed with varying levels of off-putting conditions, some which would now just considered formerly-socially-unacceptable rather than a actual disorders. Angela Bettis plays an anorexic, Clea Duvall plays a pathological liar, Elisabeth Moss plays a schizophrenic burn victim, Jillian Armanante is seemingly just playing a lesbian, Brittany Murphy plays a sexual-abuse victim who has OCD, and Angelina Jolie plays Lisa, a sociopath. It is a dynamic, fascinating, immensely talented cast, one that was fought over vigorously by the other it-girls of 1990s Hollywood like Reese Witherspoon, Rose McGowan, Katie Holmes, Christina Ricci, Sarah Polley, Alicia Witt, and Courtney Love—none of whom were cast. As far as I can tell, the only person to turn down a role in this movie was Parker Posey, but she’s given us plenty of other psychologically-complex characters over the years. Susanna has to learn to cope with the chaos around her as she deals with her own mental health issues, which, unsurprisingly, proves to be difficult. As she tries to get acclimated to mental hospital life, we are occasionally shown flashbacks to Susanna’s days as a teen beatnik—and being chastised for ridiculous things like the way she dresses and the way she responds to her parent’s friends hitting on her. This was a period of time in which formalities and manners and etiquette came before anything else, so I’d imagine it would be quite easy to be classified as “insane” if you were to deviate from these norms slightly. But it was also a politically-intense time, when MLK Jr. was assassinated, abortion had not yet been legalized, and young men were being randomly drafted into the Vietnam war every day. To not pay attention to these things, to not have a response to them, feels insane to this critic, so all of the kooky chicks in this ward were hardly that crazy to me. Susanna becomes friends with Lisa, the most volatile of the bunch, but she sort of befriends everyone there, including the nurses, and a sweet orderly named John. Susanna’s coming-of-age is not the kind we’re used to. It is not found on the playground or in a college dorm, but in seeing death and disorder and struggle, up close and personal. Susanna’s feelings are validated, but also rightfully shown from a place of privilege, one that the other girls do not possess. Girl, Interrupted is a collection of tense, sad, but also hilarious and charming moments during a time of extreme change and revolution. The soundtrack is perfect, the clothes are stunning, and every single member of this cast is on their A-game. I can see why Angelina Jolie won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, but I’m absolutely shocked that Whoopi Goldberg didn’t get that nomination. I didn’t even know she was in this movie at all! And she’s one of the best characters with some of the best lines! Unfortunately, the real Susanna Kaysen wasn’t a fan of this film adaptation, as she abhorred the director’s liberties with altering the final chapters of this story, but I still enjoyed it. This project was in development for nearly ten years before it was actually made, because Winona Ryder acquired the rights to this story herself and wanted so badly to do this story justice, but you can’t please everybody. Girl, Interrupted is undoubtedly tragic in its themes and depictions of mental illness, but it was also more warm and fuzzy and hopeful than I would’ve expected. Much like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, it is an impeccable ensemble piece where every character is given a fair amount of characterization and authentic detail that makes the experience more visceral and impactful overall. It’s also just a beautiful movie to look at, with a lovely Fall aesthetic and a gaggle of troubled but undeniably fashionable gals. Before I even watched this film, I could sense its influence upon other pieces of art, and upon other characters who carry an abundance of feminine rage. It’s a topic that can be cumbersome to cover, but when it’s in the right hands, it can be cathartic, and even life-affirming. I feel that both of tonight’s films handled their complicated subjects with care and candor and enthusiasm, making them far more enjoyable to watch than other, sappier coming-of-age films. These coming-of-rage movies were just the right amount of angry, frustrated, and freeing, and I’m just glad that I’m finally old enough to appreciate them. Until next time, dear reader, grow up! 🙄