Eighth Grade- Bo Burnham Makes an Impressive Directorial Debut


Eighth Grade- Bo Burnham Makes an Impressive Directorial Debut




Bo Burnham has been one of my favourite stand-up comedians for a while, his mix of musical comedy and sharp personal introspective wit is something that I admire greatly. Admittedly, I was upset as he quit comedy, but was extremely excited for his feature film ‘Eighth Grade’. My expectations were extremely high, and this film still surprised me, it didn’t exceed my expectations but subverted them and made something beautiful instead. Don’t go in expecting a hilarious high school comedy, because it is a surprisingly quiet character study that really intrigued and entertained me.

First of all, Elsie Fischer is incredible as the protagonist Kayla. She plays this excellent divide of private and public life which is incredibly admirable for a 14-year-old girl. Her shy and awkward personality is so convincing, with realistic reactions and expressions for a teenager who feels out of place. But what is really interesting is when she contrasts this with the YouTube videos she makes, she teaches life lessons to a non-existent audience with this forced confident YouTuber personality. Surprisingly, the vast majority of the child acting is really good, there has been this obvious decision by Burnham to go against High School pre-conceptions. Every teen has this heightened arrogance almost, as they are trying to find themselves through faking a confidence and persona. It is 13-year olds pretending to be caricatures of 13-year olds that they’ve seen in film and TV, crazy great direction. A surprising stand out performance is Kayla’s Dad (Josh Hamilton), his conflict with Kayla’s is well thought through and leads to some excellent moments.

As soon as this film was released, a lot of press described it as ‘relatable’ and ‘scarily realistic’, whilst I don’t disagree I still feel the film is a lot more than that. It features some incredibly tense and uncomfortable scenes that are almost shot like a horror film. But at the same time, it manages to discuss the perception and reality, it is relatable not because of Kayla’s personality but in its themes. How the film shows people finding themselves and the difficulties of identity runs through every character, criticising and apologising for the system that is middle school. I was initially scared the film would be dated and fall into the ‘social media is bad’ hypocrisy that so many films fall into. But it treats it as a matter of fact subject. Burnham is a young director that grew up through technology, He is analysing how social media has become an integral part of how children grow up as an inevitability.

As a musician, Burnham has put a lot of work into the score composed by Anna Meredith. The sensory overload in some scenes is incredible, with harsh atmospheric pieces that create this awful tension, contrasted beautifully with moments of silence and softer pieces. However, it occasionally gets a bit jarring and repetitive, as it changes so much. It is an overall structural problem with the film, it features a lot of disconnected scenes with thin threads acting as an overall plot. This could be intentional, as it focuses on building Kayla’s character and the eventful life of being a teenager, but it still makes the pacing a bit exhausting. There is this excellent use of camera work repeatedly, with tracking and close shots always following Kayla. It creates this identification and perspective through fantastic visual storytelling, as well as lighting being used surprisingly symbolic as naturalistic lighting is amplified and used to show safety and security.

‘Eighth Grade’ is an interesting experiment that I thoroughly enjoyed, it suffers mostly by its pacing and structural problems. But stands out massively with fantastic writing and character development, although the comedy is very hit and miss. It’s surprising that a film directed by a stand-up comedian is very light on comedy and instead is much more melancholy, with a striking persistent tone that makes even the comedic moments highly sympathetic. Burnham has always worked with heightened personal touches in his work, it is interesting to see him look at a modern day setting he is not as familiar with. But, as he quotes from Make Happy “I Have always worked with writing about performance” and you can see that in Eighth Grade. Every character is performing as they always shout out to the void in hopes for attention and often shrink back when they aren’t performing.  I strongly recommend and commend this film’s ambition.

Thanks for reading!