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| A24 |
When it comes to high school movies, you’ve usually got the
choice of one of three roads: the shy nerd who branches out, learns to live his
life, and gets the girl, the rowdy party guy who gets a reality check, learns
to be a bit more responsible, and gets the girl, or the underdog sports
flick. The pronouns can change, the era
can shift back and forth, but the basic outline usually remains the same. However, every once in a while, you’ll get
something that breaks from the mold, like The
Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day
Off or, in this case, The Spectacular
Now. Directed by James Ponsoldt and
written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, the film follows two
teenagers, the brash Sutter Keely (Miles Teller) and the quiet Aimee Finecky
(Shailene Woodley) as they try to navigate each other and the world around them
during their last month of high school.
While the tagline sounds typical, the great script, amazing directing,
and incredible performances make the film a real wonder, an honest, endearing,
and painful snapshot of young life.
As Sutter Keely, Miles Teller plays a version of the characters
he’s done in films like 21 and Over and
Project X, the “party hard” goofball
that everybody loves and/or hates. While
Sutter’s behavior might be tolerated or even celebrated in another film, director
Ponsoldt instead shows our lead without any limelight, as a completely lost
mess of a person. Although he acts
supremely confident, he’s also seen as a joke by his classmates, has little to
no ambition outside of partying, and drinks to the point of carrying a flask of
alcohol on his person at all times, behavior that eventually drives his
girlfriend Cassidy away. However, when
he wakes up on a lawn in the paper route of innocent Aimee Finecky, played with
a bubbly sense of youth by Shailene Woodley of The Descendants and Secret
Life of the American Teenager, the two form an unlikely bond and,
eventually, a relationship. Teller and
Woodley have perhaps the best on-screen chemistry of the year; it’s a wonder to
see their two characters start to bleed into one another as their story moves
along, Sutter’s confidence into Aimee and Aimee’s sense of responsibility into
Sutter. From the flashes of jealousy to
the moments of genuine love to the instances of real pain and confusion, their
relationship feels so very authentic and true to the experience of being
young. While there are a lot of warm
moments in The Spectacular Now, the
ones that I’ll remember the most are the ones that broke my heart, those
fragments of loss and sadness. It’s
great work done by the writers and director, but at the heart it’s truly a
testament to the abilities of Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley, proof that
they are able to stretch their wings beyond the standard high school rom-com.
While Teller and Woodley are certainly the power couple of The Spectacular Now, the supporting cast
puts in work that is just as solid. Brie
Larson (21 Jump Street) does a great
job as Cassidy, Sutter’s ex-girlfriend who loses interest in his lack of
control and conviction, Jennifer Jason Leigh (The Machinist) and Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) give
heartfelt performances as his mother Sara and sister Holly, and Bob Odenkirk (Breaking Bad) and Andre Royo (The Wire) also do good work in their
small mentorly parts as his boss and geometry teacher, respectively. However, the standout amongst the supporting
cast, and perhaps the most surprising performance of the film, is Kyle Chandler
as Sutter’s deadbeat father Tommy. After
seeing Chandler as the all-together All-American in Super 8, Zero Dark Thirty,
and especially Friday Night Lights, having
him play a man who is barely keeping himself together is alarming and affecting
to see. His fatherly stutters become the
tics of an addict, and his strong voice becomes one not of wise conviction but
of desperate reassurance. Abandoning his
family in the wake of an affair, Tommy is startling figure for his son, a
Sutter-Yet-To-Be that even shares his “Live for the Now” mantra but for all the
wrong reasons. He’s only on screen for a
short time, but Chandler’s performance here is one of the strongest of his
career.
The closing moral of most high school movies, especially
those with a heavy romantic subplot, is that love is forever, that if you
declare your love for your crush at prom or at graduation or at a gas station
on the side of the road you’ll get to ride out into the sunset on a “happily
ever after”. In The Spectacular Now, said moral is eschewed in favor of something a
bit more disheartening but a lot more realistic; love moves on. Considering the track record of the creators
(Ponsoldt first directed the alcoholic drama Smashed, also starring Winstead, and Neustadter and Weber wrote the
indie anti-rom-com (500) Days of Summer)
the film’s outcome is hardly surprising, but it is refreshing and at the very
least thoughtful. There are very few
clean endings in life, especially when it comes to the transition from
childhood to adulthood, and while Sutter ends the film thinking that he has it
all figured out, we as the audience know that he still has a long way to
go. It’s an honest ending, somewhat
hopefully but not entirely optimistic, and I think it’s the right one for this
story. On the whole, The Spectacular Now is arguably one of
the best dramas of the year, heartfelt and heartbreaking, with some great
writing and astounding performances. It’s
a perfectly authentic slice of life, with all the kisses and bruises left
intact.
Grade: A-
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