Premiere Date: September 1, 2018
Director: Joel Edgerton
Screenwriter: Joel Edgerton
Cinematography: Eduard Grau
Favorite Quote: “I’m gay and I’m your son. And neither of those things are going to change. Okay, so let’s deal with that. Or let’s call it a day.”
Boy Erased is a great movie. It is about Jared (Lucas Hedges), who is sent to gay conversion therapy by the decision of his local pastors and his parents Nancy (Nicole Kidman), and Marshall (Russell Crowe). This therapy involves gay people (usually young adults) to shame themselves in front of people for their natural tendencies with a lot more weird, wrong things such as creating a family history about who had the “illness” of being gay. At the end, Jared managed to get out of that place with the help of his formerly blindsided mother and created a life for himself as a writer. I think these types of movies where they show the disgusting sides of discrimination against LGBTQ+ movies are really important. These movies should be watched by everyone, it shows how truly damaging these types of things are to a person’s well being.
I really liked the acting. Nicole Kidman was really good, especially her Southern accent was really convincing. She also made me feel very contradicted. Her mimics, her eyes made me really feel like she really cared for her son’s well-being and she truly wanted him to be happy. At the same time, she supported his son going to the therapy. I guess this is a problem with people whose values they hold so dear to themselves clash with their love for their family. I didn’t feel the same thing with Marshall, he was still holding his church dear to his heart after he saw what kind of damage therapy did to his son. He also confessed this clash he is having in his mind to Jared at the end of the movie. Usually we see parents holding children above anything else but that’s not the case for every parent, and it’s nice to see a character getting out of that narrative and be real.
Other than the acting and the story, nothing seemed to stand out but cinematography, and other aspects were good too. I really enjoyed watching it and I recommend it to everyone.