'We accept the love we think we deserve.'

Rating: 10/10 (8 August 2013)

This is one of the most emotional films I have seen in years. The casting of the three main characters is so perfect that you cannot imagine anyone else playing any of those parts. The power and truth and nakedness of the main performances is heart-rending. It is rare to see anyone reveal so much in front of a camera, and it reminds me of Marilu Parolini baring her soul so totally in the documentary CHRONICLE OF A SUMMER (1961, see my review). The most astounding performance of all is from Ezra Miller, and perhaps the reason why he is able to convey the torment of his character as a gay boy so well is that he had publicly admitted that he is himself gay, so presumably he had some unfortunate experiences of his own to draw upon. As for Emma Watson, who'd've thunkit? One minute she's a cute child doing magic tricks with witches and before you can blink, there she is, a young woman with all kinds of complex feelings and torments. She is most extraordinary in her role, and she will doubtless have a long and brilliant career in front of her for the next, shall we say sixty, years? For who will ever tire of her? And then there is Logan Lerman, who has his own problems being shy, a wallflower (hence the title), inarticulate, and lacking in confidence. He too is marvellous in his part. The three characters all suffer from extreme early traumas, especially Lerman and Watson, and suffer every day quietly behind their facades, or in the cases of Watson and Miller, perhaps not so quietly, as they are superficially wild extroverts attempting to mask their isolation and desperation behind extremes of bravado. All three actors had early experience in front of the camera and are able to ignore its presence, so one can say the casting was as perfect as it gets. The three and their immediate friends all consider themselves the misfits in the local high school in Pennsylvania, where this film is set. Lerman at first is too shy to speak, and hides in corners, but Miller and Watson 'discover' and adopt him, so he opens up and begins living. Lerman is in his first year and the others are in their last year, so in the latter part of the film where Lerman is left alone at the beginning of his second year and feels abandoned certainly rang bells with me, as a similar thing happened to me after my first year at university, most of my friends having been several years older than myself and then they suddenly vanished like the mist. The film was so evocative that I had some very sad moments indeed remembering that same sense of abandonment which Lerman goes through, and which I had long ago suppressed from my own experience. To be 'the only one left' anywhere is a devastating thing to go through. A friend of mine who lived to be 105 brought it all home to me most powerfully by saying to me wistfully when he was only in his 90s that everyone who had been a 'lifelong' close friend of his had died at least 25 years before, including his wife, and there had not been any 'old friend' of his alive to talk to for more than a quarter of a century. So I guess that's worse than Logan Lerman's predicament. This film is based on a novel and screenplay by Stephen Chbosky (I suppose that's Polish and was originally Chboski, since Polish names don't end in 'y'; the 'ch' would be breathed at the back of the palate and not pronounced hard). Chbosky directs the film himself, and it is so intense and 'real' that it is clear that no one else could have done it with the necessary authenticity. And he is a really brilliant director in any case. He is presumably the basis for Lerman's character, and Chbosky himself comes from Pennsylvania. One wonders and dreads to think what became of 'his' Watson and Miller, the real ones he must have known, and whether they made it or not. Deep underneath all the manufactured merriment, these characters are really suffering. The way this is portrayed is a genuine contribution to showing real and true psychological dilemmas on the screen for a mass audience, which normally sees wholly artificial character situations in contrived stories. This film is so real you can step right through the screen and hold their hands, and they need it. I take all my hats off to Stephen Chbosky. He is really one of the best American filmmakers now. What a delight, and what a heartache. And the last scene is perfect.