American Teen (which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance film festival) is a documentary that begs the question: Does life imitate art or art imitate life? Proving that you can set the O.C. in the heart of Americana and still wring out every bit as much melodrama, American Teen acts as a sort of video yearbook, cataloging the good, the bad and the ugly of adolescence.
American Teen takes place in Warsaw, Indiana, a small, shockingly average Middle America town populated by good, God-fearing, Red state citizens. It is the sort of town that turns out every Fourth of July for the Main Street parade and whose singular entertainment is cheering the local high school basketball team as they take on neighboring rivals (think Friday Night Lights). It is within this as-American-as-apple-pie setting that American Teen works its magic. Using the hermetically sealed world of high school as its stage, the documentary follows the Warsaw Community High School senior class from their first day of school to their graduation a year later.
As if begging its audience to choose which archetype with whom they identify, American Teen focuses on: Megan, the rich, spoiled princess who spends half her time tearing down those around her and the other half agonizing over whether or not she’s made it into Notre Dame; Colin, the school jock who will have no choice but to skip college and enlist in the military if he isn’t able to secure an athletic scholarship; Hannah, the rebel with a cool-factor usually only achieved by fictional characters like Juno MacGuff, who yearns to ditch her sheltered life and escape to Hollywood; Mitch, the heartthrob who can’t decide between the monotonous popular girl or the caste reject he really likes; and Jake, the geek who aches for the love of a good woman but has yet to learn how to love himself.
Using these archetypal avatars as our entry into the world of underage drinking, illicit sex, high school politics and dreams of becoming something more than one was born to be, American Teen reveals a world as petty and superficial as you know it is and as deep and profound as you know it has the potential to be.
We loathe Megan, queen of the “Mean Girls,” as she eviscerates all those she deems unworthy of her lofty social perch, but I defy you to not find tears in your eyes when she discovers her college entrance exam results. We want to reach through the screen and enfold Jake in our arms, assuring him that high school is in no way a barometer of his future life, and, if anything, the very traits that set him apart for ridicule in school will probably make him esteemed and envied outside it. We feel Hannah’s agony at the possibility of becoming a hollow shell like her emotionally disturbed mother and thrill as she violently tears away to pursue a vision only she sees.
In 1964, director Paul Almond made the film Seven Up!, about the diverse lives of a group of seven-year-old British schoolchildren. Director Michael Apted has returned to the now-grown children every seven years since then with a sequel, charting the changes in their lives. I would love for Nanette Burstein, the Academy Award-winning director of American Teen to do the same thing in 10 years for a Warsaw Community High School class reunion. I desperately want to know how they all turn out.
Who needs fiction when the truth is funnier, richer and far more moving?!
© Copyright 2008 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.