American Teen

written and directed by Nanette Burstein
USA; 2008

Halfway through the film, Megan Krizmanich commits an irresponsible act of vandalism, bordering on hate crime material. She is suspended from her student council position, and nothing more is mentioned about it. It's a confusing sequence, incongruous and, in this unresolved state, doesn't serve the story. Director Nanette Burstein quite obviously alternates between reality and drama, and often confuses the two, as if she is unsure whether to prove that art imitates life, or the other way around. It's an old conundrum, and it's no surprise that she stumbles. Colin Clemens' father, Gordy, offers a half smile every time he mentions Colin's college prospects. He is a man who is afraid of committing, and uses his sense of humor to overcompensate. This is confusing and frustrating to a son that clearly loves him and harbors many interior insecurities himself. I'm a lay psychoanalyst (having almost no training in the area, admittedly), but this is what I gleaned. This is what I gleaned despite Ms. Burstein's mishandling of this same material. Again, it's as if she is unsure whether this will make good drama (a father who tells his son that a basketball scholarship is the only hope for a college education) or a glimpse into a deeper cultural issue (the complex relationship between a father and his son). She's in directorial limbo, despite a Sundance win in the Directorial category no less (the animation by the way? wtf?). To be fair, with this kind of comprehensive coverage it's hard for a critical audience not to indulge in some deep psychological prying, and likewise it's hard for the subjects not to find themselves in a constant performance, making simulacra of themselves in an effort not only to define their own personal identities, but also to remain interesting subjects for the doc. But as a straight story most of this is old hat, while conversely there is far too much of the editorial hand to take it seriously as a verité thought-piece.

The hero is Hannah Bailey, whose emotional crisis prevents her from performing ad nauseum. Poor girl, Burstein attempts to make a story out of her rebound romance, even creating an odd-man-out fifth character of the guy, putting him on the poster, etc. This guy serves as nothing if not a cookie-cutter foil to Hannah's explosiveness. She's the star of the show, and it's for all the same reasons that her story is a difficult one to tell. Hannah's best moments are when she is utterly confused, because confusion is the prevailing state of most high school seniors. Certain elements are very confusing in Hannah's story, like the staged conference with her conflicted parents, an ambiguous relationship with her best friend, a lack of real insight into what her home life is like. In retrospect, Burstein should have embraced a more confused take on the footage, rather than fit poor Hannah into the Ally Sheedy arty misfit role and move on. To be fair, there is an attempt by the filmmakers to allow their subjects to transcend these social roles, but the weight of the stereotypes drag down this film in the end.

Doc films and reality television have created an environment where performance is second nature to many subjects. A film that resonates is Operation Filmmaker, which premiered earlier this summer and tracked the European sojourn of an Iraqi film student whose school had been destroyed in the bombs. Filmmaker Liev Schreiber, in a moment of humanitarian action, offered this student, Muthana, a position as a PA on the production of his film Everything Is Illuminated in Prague. Muthana at once sees himself as the star of the show (considering filmmaker Nina Davenport's camera follows him everywhere), and, like many young men with stars in their eyes, objects to the menial role of assistant and the labor involved with it. In his case, there is a war surrounding his life, and the hollow performance is coupled with real feelings of sympathy. American Teen similarly invokes real sympathy for high school seniors and the perils of that position. The characters perform in some culturally mandated response to the original sin of adolescence, even going so far as to provide epigraphic apologies during the closing credits. But Muthana and the "A-Teens," no matter how you look at it, are still performers.