REEL OF PASSAGE
3 Coming of Age Movies You Need to Check Out
Puberty hits us all in different ways. For most, it’s a rude shock — waking us up on a school day only to remind us that such days won’t last forever. For the more well-adjusted, it’s an eventual transition that has been a long time coming. However it may have affected you, one thing is for certain — it is always accompanied by a gnawing feeling that life will never be the same again.
Throughout human history, people have tried to capture this phase in our lives and the feelings associated with it through books, paintings, music, and movies. In fact, popular works of fiction from the ‘Odyssey’ to the ‘Harry Potter’ series have in some way or another pointed at this transformation of people.
In this blog, we’ll be taking a look at three coming-of-age movies that did a splendid job of capturing this absolutely human experience:
Spirited Away
What do you get when Hayao Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli, and Walt Disney come together? A masterpiece is what! 2001’s Spirited Away is an emotionally touching, beautifully colored vision of a brief incident in the life of Chihiro. A 10-year old Japanese girl, Chihiro travels to the spirit realm with her parents, when they take a wrong turn while relocating from one town to the other. In this realm, her parents are transformed into pigs by the evil witch, Yubaba, and it is up to our young heroine to rely on her own judgement, courage, loyalty, and wits to get them out of this predicament. The story relies heavily on staples of Japanese folklore, and uses a breathtaking color palette to bring them to life.
Where Spirited Away stands out from other coming-of-age stories is its insistence on keeping Chihiro’s character completely uncomplicated. There is no unnecessary romance between her character and that of Haku, a fellow spirit trapped by Yubibo, despite them sharing a loving bond. Neither is too much emphasis placed on Chihiro being a ‘pretty girl’. Both these decisions were made by the story’s writer, the master craftsman Hayao Miyazaki, who felt that these were elements an actual 10-year-old may not relate to in real life.
Fun Bits: Spirited Away introduced the character of ‘No Face’, a staple at many cosplay events.
Boyhood
Shot over a period of 11 years, between 2002 to 2013, Boyhood fits into a film genre called bildungsroman, which focuses on the protagonist’s growth from childhood to adulthood. It is told from the perspective of Mason Jr, a regular American boy, as he grows from a child into a man — all the while keeping an eye on the world and his family as they change around him. The movie is packed with powerhouse performances by Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke and directed by Richard Linklater of the Before Sunrise trilogy. In the movie, Hawke’s character Mason Sr. (Hawke) and Olivia (Arquette) are separated and have two kids: Samantha and Mason Jr. They are a regular American family and themes such as pop culture, the Iraq war, and gun control intertwine with their lives to reinforce this normalcy.
The movie follows Mason Jr as he goes through adolescence in the 21st Century, experiencing alcohol and drugs for the first time and having his first intimate relationship. While the first half of the film has Mason being a normal teenager, filled with angst and despondency, sometime around interval he meets Mr Turlington — his photography teacher. In turn, Mr Turlington becomes a mentor to Mason and pushes him to make the most of his potential.
Fun Bits: Lorelei Linklater, the actress who plays Samantha, is director Richard Linklater’s daughter.
The Apu Trilogy
Not all coming-of-age films necessarily need to have a happy ending for them to be good. Satyajit Ray proved this in heaps through his ‘Apu’ trilogy — an outstanding piece of storytelling and craftsmanship. The three movies Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956), and Apur Sansar (1959) are exceptional examples of bildungsroman, following the life of its title character Apurba ‘Apu’ Roy and the circumstances that dictate his life
Despite the heavy criticism and challenges Ray faced while making the movie — mostly to edit the ends so that they fit a ‘happily ever after’ mold — he never backed down. In fact, his dedication to realism and authentic narration of what makes human life human — hint, it’s the suffering — are what make the Apu trilogy unlike any film in this category.
Fun Bits: Part two in the trilogy, Aparajito, won a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
3 Coming of Age Movies You Need to Check Out Puberty hits us all in different ways. For most, it’s a rude shock — waking us up on a school day only to remind us that such days won’t last forever. For the more
