Adolescence - a wake up call

It's been a long long time since I watched a TV series that is so thought provoking and compelled me to write about it. In case you haven't heard about Adolescence produced by Netflix. I highly recommend it, it is worth 4 hours of your time. Before I watched it, I resisted googling because I knew once I started it would keep on coming up on my feed, and I didn't want anything to spoil my experience. That's just me, maybe you're different.

One take cinematography

This is not the first time it's been done, but this is definitely the most outstanding feature of Adolescence. There are 4 x 1 hour episode in Adolescence, and each episode is filmed in one single shot. No breaks, no editing. The camera films from actor to actor, location to location, scene to scene, switching continuously and seaminglessly. It's a real life real time performance and the authenticity makes viewers feel they part of it.

Actors only have one chance to get it right, and if they mess up anything, the whole crew has to start from the beginning again.

How they do this is incredible, given how tight some of the places are like going up the staircase inside the house, people sitting inside the car. Then you have actors jumping outside through the window running away, and the camera follows from inside the building to outside and chasing after them. The most remarkable scene is the last 5 minutes in episode 2. I won't tell you what happened, but when I watched it, initially I didn't think anything special about it, then suddenly I thought, "Hold on! How did they do this? It's crazy!" This is the only scene I've gone back to rewatch so far because I really wanted to appreciate the skill behind all this.

Actors

Jamie, the lead kid in the series is played by 13 year old Owen Cooper. It's hard to believe this is his acting debut and he hasn't had any formal drama lessons. He appears in the first and third episode. The third episode is an one hour meeting between him and his shrink Briony, played by Erin Doherty. Technically, this is probably the easiest to film because around 90% of the episode is inside the same room. What makes this episode remarkable is the intensity of emotions, and the dialogue between the two. It's a lot for anyone, let alone a kid to remember an hour's worth of lines, and to be in character.

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Jamie's emotions towards his Briony swings from gratitude to hostility to remorse, to vulnerability, and his mood changes accordingly within the hour. The meeting starts off on a high. Briony bring James a hot chocolate, she even bought some marshmallow sprinkles for him. The meeting moves to a cat and mouse game, There is a subtle battle between who is in control of the situation, is it Jamie because Briony is looking for answers, or is it Briony because Jamie needs her to help him? Jamie becomes skeptical, is she asking him trick questions? Tempers flare, can a female adult be intimidated by a 13 year old boy? After rage comes remorse and breakdown and a desparation for acceptance.

After watching this episode, I'm pretty sure Owen Cooper is destined for bigger things in his acting career.

The other lead character, and co writer of the series is Stephen Graham, he plays Jamie's dad Eddie and appears in episode 1 and 4, and briefly in episode 2 at the end shot.

Eddie is a good father, working hard to provide for his family. He loves his family and like all parents don't expect anything bad to happen to them. He's not the loving father type, no hugs and kisses, not even when Jamie was arrested in episode 1. Maybe he was just as scared and confused as Jamie. But he is there to support him, or doing his best to do it.

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It's Eddie's 50th birthday in episode 4, and as head of the family , he's trying to make the day as normal and enjoyable as possible given the circumstances. That's not as easy as it sounds when you're faced with the hostility from the local community, and how you see yourself as a parent. Was it my fault? Did I do too much or not enough? Could I have done something different to prevent this from happening? How do I protect my family and, and can we pull through this now?

The beauty of this episode, if I can use this word, is how the whole series ends with Eddie reconnecting with Jamie, albeit not physically. And we finally see the emotional and loving side of the father where he reluctantly accepts the fate of his child.

Online misogyny

Adolescence explores how people, particularly teenagers can be radicalised from the manosphere without them realising it. It looks at the problem of the growing disconnection between parent and child when the child drifts into another sphere that the parent doesn't even know about. A sphere created by predators and mysoginists like Andrew Tate who can still walk around freely and continue to promote the toxic masculinity culture is beyond me.

Manosphere is a new word I learned from the series, as is incel, as is the hidden meaning behind many of the emojis we use every day. As is the 80/20 rule where 80% of the females are attracted to 20% of male. Jamie perceived himself to be part of the 80% and herein lies the problem and the root cause of everything. Even as a 13 year old, he is blinded by the manosphere, and his inability to attract girls. He doesn't see himself as the problem. The problem are with other people who think he's ugly and are not attracted to him. The problem are these ideologies promoted by radicalisers.

Afterthought

I plan to binge watch the whole series again, one to appreciate the one take technicality, and two because it deserves another 4 hours of my life. There is a lot packed into the series, and a masterclass in great acting not seen that often. More importantly, it's a wake up call for everyone on how vulnerable children and even adults can be, when a toxic culture continues to permeate in our society.

Posted using CineTV