Hugs not Drugs
Love and Communication in Charlie Bartlett
The tricky thing about Charlie Bartlett is that it sneaks up on you. It's a slow building piece of work, content to touch upon small story elements here and there before finally coalescing into a very emotional ending sequence. You're given the story of a typical rebellious youth, that merges into a fish out of water tale, then adds an undertone of budding romance, then with montages that make it seem like this is about successful enterprise, then the moment where fame becomes too real, then regret, then heartache—it's all very dizzying. And for roughly the first hour of this movie, I wasn’ t all to big a fan of it. It wasn’t bad, per se: It's well-acted, has an interesting premise, and is very competently shot. But what I thought was going to be a sly stab at what one could perceive as the over medication of today's youth—a premise that it just decides to flirt with rather than ask out on a date—turned out to be about the ultimate power in this universe: communication.
Comparisons, of course, can be made. The entire film is very evocative of other modern classic youth films, most starkly Wes Anderson's Rushmore. Opening with an dream sequence, the prep school attire, the prevalence of Cat Stevens—at first I was more than prepared to think that director Jon Poll was being a blatant thief. But thievery is okay in art, because almost all art is theft. You then of course realize, as the film goes on, that Poll is not a thief, but merely a man fond of homage—not entirely surprising, considering his primary work has been in the field of editing films for the last 20 years. With such a steady diet of what people watch, it's not shocking that Charlie Bartlett at points reminded me of all of my favorite high school films.
But the story is unique, even if it does share many of the tropes of the genre. Charlie Bartlett( Anton Yelchin ), recently expelled from a private school, tries his hand at public school. In typical fish out of water fashion he gets beaten up by a rough element, all while flirting with and crushing on Susan Gardner( the inimitable Kat Dennings ). The catch of course being that Susan's father is the Principal of the high school, Nathan Gardner( Robert Downey Jr. ). over a series of adventures that include selling drugs and attempting to enact real change within the school's drama departments and general faculty, Charlie comes of age, or figures out who he is, or whatever these movies are about. Does it really matter? Most teenage life types of films are less about the destination and more about the journey, and Charlie Bartlett is no different.
That the film opens with Charlie addressing an adoring crowd is not coincidental. The nod to Rushmore is there, but it also lets us know exactly what the movie will ultimately prove itself to be about. In the world of Charlie Bartlett, lack of communication causes all of the problems—providing a means for that communication solves it. Parents don’t communicate with children, authority doesn’ t communicate with the proletariat, girls don’t communicate with boys and vice versa. Charlie being the conduit for all of these silently frustrated forces to finally talk with one another affords him a godlike status, almost on the level of a force of nature—he dynamically changes not only any scenario he's thrown into, but the very fabric of the reality around him.
The question that one has to ask while viewing this is, is this film in fact anti-psychiatry? This is the stickiest of the issues raised, and the answer isn’t easy. The film does take it's fair share of jabs at the idea of medicating your problems away—not once did a single one of the therapists Charlie sees for his faked problems request an amount of time to further discern the root of his problems. Instead, they were content to write him prescriptions, which of course fueled his burgeoning drug trade. But notice what happens when he doles these prescriptions out—the students must talk to him, in the manner of a therapist. What makes Charlie here a more effective counselor for the problems of his fellow students? One almost feels like the film wants to blame this on generational divide—a fact made all the more explicit by the film's finale.
Charlie, having so radically shifted the agreed upon order of things in the life of Nathan Gardner, finds himself at the mercy of Gardner drunkenly waving a loaded pistol. What becomes troubling about this scene isn’t the acting, which is superb, but the ay that it appears to reinforce the order of the world. After being threatened and yelled at, Charlie finally breaks down: “I'm just a kid!” he yells. And, as if by some magic, Gardner finally eases up. Is all finally correct in the jungle now that Charlie realizes he is a subordinate to the adult order? This is what troubles me about all of this—for a film that so gleefully embraces the down with the man, anarchic joy of being a teenager, why does it immediately want to revert to the set ways of the world?
The trick is that it doesn’t. It's not only Charlie's admission that he has no clue, but also Principal Gardner's that turn this finale into something truly affecting. None of us truly feel like we have a real 100% grip on the lives we lead. But letting go of our tenuous grasp on it, the lie that we tell ourselves that we are truly in control of this roller coaster, that's the tough part. What happens in the end of this is a truly transcendent moment between two human beings. A grown alcoholic and a seventeen year drug dealer, at odds since they first laid eyes on one another, finally get to a place where they feel comfortable with letting not only their confrontational guard down, but also their regular every day guard down. And once those guards have been dropped, they communicate in a deep fashion, with real words, short and succinct, words that everyone can understand. Because this is a film about communication. And in being a film about that, about the rift that age can cause, it is the most honest and authentic look at the teenage experience that cinema has seen in quite some time.
