Plot
An Internet-addicted prep-school student captures on video camera the drug overdose of two girls.
Release Year: 2008
Rating: 6.3/10 (1,354 voted)
Critic's Score: 66/100
Director:
Antonio Campos
Stars: Ezra Miller, Jeremy Allen White, Emory Cohen
Storyline An Internet-addicted prep-school student captures on video camera the drug overdose of two girls.
Cast: Ezra Miller
-
Robert
Jeremy Allen White
-
Dave
Emory Cohen
-
Trevor
Michael Stuhlbarg
-
Mr. Burke
Addison Timlin
-
Amy
David Costabile
-
Mr. Anderson
(as David Costable)
Rosemarie DeWitt
-
Ms. Vogel
Dariusz M. Uczkowski
-
Peter
(as Dariusz Michal Uczkowski)
Gary Wilmes
-
Mr. Virgil
Lee Wilkof
-
Mr. Wiseman
Paul Sparks
-
Detective Eclisse
Bill Raymond
-
Mr. Williams
Alexandra Neil
-
Gloria Talbert
Mark Zeisler
-
Tom Talbert
Christopher McCann
-
Mr. Ullman
Opening Weekend: $2,606
(USA)
(4 October 2009)
(1 Screen)
Gross: $2,606
(USA)
(4 October 2009)
Technical Specs
Runtime:|
USA:
Did You Know?
Trivia:
In one of the early scenes in Rob's dorm room, a poster on the wall near the door says "DO YOU FEEL - new album." This poster is for an album by the popular alternative one-man music project headed by pop-rocker Bryce Avary known as The Rocket Summer. "Do You Feel" was The Rocket Summer's third full-length album and was released in 2007.
User Review
Coming of age in the YouTube generation
Rating: 8/10
The 24-year-old Campos has been winning prizes for his short films for
the past eight years; started film-making at thirteen and completed his
first short film at seventeen; has been a Presidential Scholar; and
wrote the script for this film at the Cannes Residence in Paris in fall
2006. It premiered at the 2008 Cannes Un Certain Regard series. Campos,
who was a scholarship student at an exclusive international school
himself and then went to study film at NYU, has been rejected from many
festivals, but Cannes has led him to the NYFF. He has a group of
friends and associates from NYU, and has founded Borderline Films. (See
the interview "Filmstock: Antonio Campos 'After School'" on PlumTV.)
'Afterschool,' which speaks of a boy and girl in a fancy East Coas prep
school video club, of the boy's roommate, and the death of twin Alpha
Girl classmates, is a film of and about the YouTube generation. It
begins with Rob (Ezra Miller) watching an online porn site called
"Nasty Cum Holes" (or something like that) in which a man, unseen, is
talking dirty to a young prostitute. Rob is in his dorm room, which he
shares with Dave (Jeremy Allen White), who deals drugs. The video club
links him with Amy (Addison Timlin), with whom he loses his virginity.
While ostensibly making a sort of promotional video for the school he
is shooting a hallway and stairway and all of a sudden two twin girls,
the most admired in the school as it happens, appear overdosing. Robert
rushes down the hall to them and the camera continues to watch as he
sits on the floor with them as they die. Links between all this and
Michael Haneke's 'Caché' and Van Sant's 'Elephant' are almost too
obvious to mention.
In what follows there is a lot that shows the hypocrisy and confusion
of the teachers, the headmaster, and the kids. Rob is so full of
emotion throughout the entire film that he finds himself almost
completely shut down. Mr. Wiseman the therapist or counselor (Lee
Wilkof) succeeds in getting him to open up a tiny bit by trading
obscene insults with him. (Campos' admiration for Frederick Wiseman's
'High School' led him to pay homage with the character's name.) A lot
of 'Afterschool' is seen either as a video camera (or even a cell phone
camera) see it, or as Rob sees it. When his lit teacher is talking
about 'Hamlet,' he is watching her crotch, legs, and cleavage and
that's what the camera sees. At other times the camera is fixed and one
speaker is cut out of the picture, or you see only the edge of his
head. Campos is not of the shaky, hand-held school of realism. His
evocation of the sensibility of his young characters goes deeper than
that. When kids today see something like a girlfight (or a boyfight) at
school, somebody films it, and when it's filmed it's going to wind up
on the Internet. There's a girlfight Rob and his roommate watch on the
Web and then they're in a boyfight with each other in which Rob lets
out his sudden pent up anger. Maybe his roommate is guilty in the twin
girls' death. But as the school headmaster somewhat facilely says,
maybe they all are. A wave of repression follows the incident--perhaps
evoking the aftermath of 9/11, which Campos interchanged with the
girls' death to get kids' reaction shots.
Campos likes moments that make us and himself uncomfortable, starting
with the opening porn video, but continuing with Rob's experience and
the world seen through his eyes. (Campos made a short film in which a
young girl sells her virginity on eBay and loses it for real on camera
to an older man.) Rob's safety is continually compromised and his
emotions are uncertain. He doesn't know who he is, and neither does the
filmmaker. Rob is a cleancut, even beautiful, boy, but he is almost
clinically shut down--not an unusual state for a male teenager, maybe
even more likely in a privileged setting like a New England prep
school.
Rob and Amy are assigned the task of making a 'memorial film' about the
dead twins. However the film he makes is too abstract, existential,
ironic and just plain crude to be acceptable. When his supervisor sees
it he thinks it's meant to be a mean joke. Later a more sweetened up
and conventional version of the film is shown to the whole school,
which we also see. Altering and re-editing reality is a continual theme
of 'Afterschool.' As Deborah Young of 'Hollywood Reporter' writes,
'Afterschool' "is a sophisticated stylistic exercise too rarefied for
wide audiences, but earmarked for critical kudos." It may seem in the
watching more crude than it is. The cobbled-together vernacular images
are clumsy, but the filmmaker is supple, deft, and sophisticated
technically and bold intellectually--still-beyond his years. He has
also captured a world he himself knows personally with rather stunning
accuracy.
(Note: I am not sure of all the characters' names and may have got some
identifications wrong here.)
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