Speak
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Michael Angarano Director: Jessica Sharzer Rating: 
Speak is an unexpected gem. Adapted from the popular novel by Laurie Halse Anderson and first broadcast in 2004, the film features an excellent lead performance by Kristen Stewart (Panic Room) as Melinda Sordino, a deeply troubled teen facing her first year of high school and all its attendant perils, including student cliques (here called "clans," such as "the Marthas--very Connecticut, very prep"), hostile teachers (with the exception of Steve Zahn's art instructor), and so forth. Melinda appears to be just another misfit, alienated, shunned, and sullen ("the most depressed person I've ever known," as one classmate puts it), burdened with clueless, hopelessly self-absorbed parents (Elizabeth Perkins, D.D. Sweeney) and her own introverted nature. But there's much more to it than that, and director Jessica Sharzer, who co-wrote the screenplay, deftly balances flashbacks of the traumatic event that turned Melinda into a virtual mute with her pained attempts to deal with its aftermath; the two stories, past and present, unfold together, keeping us involved all the way to the film's unsettling but cathartic conclusion. Powerful, moving, and well-acted (the adult roles occasionally veer toward stereotype, but the kids' performances are consistently good), Speak is a compelling and admirable piece of work. --Sam Graham
Relevant Topics : Teen drinking, Rape, High school cliques, friendship, judging...
I am not sure what about this film fascinates me. I have watched it several times and feel it was very well made. I have also recently read the book. This movie "speaks"out for a young, hurt girl who is trying to sort out "High School" the odd "world within a world" that it is and how she will ultimately react to something that happened to her the previous summer.
As a parent I ask myself "Am I listening to my children?" or am I like the parents in the movie, missing all the clues, totally absorbed in my own selfish world of concerns.
In high school a friend of a long time boyfriend, an acquaintance, was at my house and began to say some inappropriate things. Then he leaned into me and whispered in my ear, "Every girl dreams of being raped!" It was a moment frozen in time. I grappled to bend my mind around what he had just whispered to me and what he was implying.
"Get out! I think you should go! Now!" I think my blunt response took him off guard. Typically I was an obedient, subservient, quiet, withdrawn type. I was on my guard around him after that.
A few years later, in college, within my family, were close encounters similar to the kind that Melinda experiences. I awoke to heartrending, piercing screaming--sobbing. I will never forget the fear I felt hearing that emotion in the middle of the night. Of the physical verses the verbal form of rape--by far the one that effected the family member involved was the verbal form...haunting, real, subconscious.
As a society we need to confront the double standards that loom up between our young women and men. There should be no leniency for "boys just being boys." No church, no institution, no name to hide hideous behavior behind. It should not be tolerated! It is, now, in our society.
Speak is an unexpected gem. Adapted from the popular novel by Laurie Halse Anderson and first broadcast in 2004, the film features an excellent lead performance by Kristen Stewart (Panic Room) as Melinda Sordino, a deeply troubled teen facing her first year of high school and all its attendant perils, including student cliques (here called "clans," such as "the Marthas--very Connecticut, very prep"), hostile teachers (with the exception of Steve Zahn's art instructor), and so forth. Melinda appears to be just another misfit, alienated, shunned, and sullen ("the most depressed person I've ever known," as one classmate puts it), burdened with clueless, hopelessly self-absorbed parents (Elizabeth Perkins, D.D. Sweeney) and her own introverted nature. But there's much more to it than that, and director Jessica Sharzer, who co-wrote the screenplay, deftly balances flashbacks of the traumatic event that turned Melinda into a virtual mute with her pained attempts to deal with its aftermath; the two stories, past and present, unfold together, keeping us involved all the way to the film's unsettling but cathartic conclusion. Powerful, moving, and well-acted (the adult roles occasionally veer toward stereotype, but the kids' performances are consistently good), Speak is a compelling and admirable piece of work. --Sam Graham
Relevant Topics : Teen drinking, Rape, High school cliques, friendship, judging...
I am not sure what about this film fascinates me. I have watched it several times and feel it was very well made. I have also recently read the book. This movie "speaks"out for a young, hurt girl who is trying to sort out "High School" the odd "world within a world" that it is and how she will ultimately react to something that happened to her the previous summer.
As a parent I ask myself "Am I listening to my children?" or am I like the parents in the movie, missing all the clues, totally absorbed in my own selfish world of concerns.
In high school a friend of a long time boyfriend, an acquaintance, was at my house and began to say some inappropriate things. Then he leaned into me and whispered in my ear, "Every girl dreams of being raped!" It was a moment frozen in time. I grappled to bend my mind around what he had just whispered to me and what he was implying.
"Get out! I think you should go! Now!" I think my blunt response took him off guard. Typically I was an obedient, subservient, quiet, withdrawn type. I was on my guard around him after that.
A few years later, in college, within my family, were close encounters similar to the kind that Melinda experiences. I awoke to heartrending, piercing screaming--sobbing. I will never forget the fear I felt hearing that emotion in the middle of the night. Of the physical verses the verbal form of rape--by far the one that effected the family member involved was the verbal form...haunting, real, subconscious.
As a society we need to confront the double standards that loom up between our young women and men. There should be no leniency for "boys just being boys." No church, no institution, no name to hide hideous behavior behind. It should not be tolerated! It is, now, in our society.
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