Inside America

Inside America (official website here) was the first screening that I attended at the Toronto International Film Festival 2010. In my haste to select films, perhaps, I misread or misinterpreted the synopsis. I had thought that this film would be more of a documentary, rather than a feature film. I love a good documentary, and of course the subject of youth finding their way through tenuous times is an easy fit for my taste. By the time we got to the Q&A, I realized that I had not really misread the synopsis, as the lines between feature film and documentary were blurred in film.
This film is about youth in Brownville, Texas, mainly those who grew up in the rough part of town. There are a couple main characters, and we live through their lives and relatively stereotypical problems that one can draw from their surroundings.
Although, now that I've had some time to reflect about the film and had the benefit of the Q&A, I will not rave about this film, most likely due to my personal experience watching it. Unfortunately, I had selected a seat in the theatre, which was ultimately too close to the screen. I spent a lot of the film, watching the bottom right corner of the screen to put a damper on the splitting headache that I was getting from the massive, jarring picture that was overwhelming me. I wasn't feeling 100% that day, and the flashing pictures and way that the film was shot made me feel nauseated. A steadycam, might have made it better for me. Staring at that little corner of the screen still allowed me to see the entire picture, so I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything. I was getting a similar feeling as how I get when a migraine is looming and I feel dizzy and the room feel like it's growing and things get echoey and overpowering. Not helping the situation was the fact that seated beside me, was a gentleman who must have had a couple alcoholic beverages at dinner. I felt dizzy and ill. There were a couple points during the film that I way hoping that the end was near, because I was so uncomfortable. I know the film was decent, but I wasn't able to enjoy it to the extent that I would have if the circumstances were different.
Some of the content of the film was downright shocking. A lot of it is stuff that for some reason, I associate with "only in America". The amount of security in the school, the infatuation with guns, so I guess it wasn't just the setting that was uncomfortable for me, but some of he content as well. I do not hear a lot of swearing on a regular basis, and I'm in a field where I've trained myself to use more child friendly words and need to reprimand children for saying them. The amount of swearing in this film also made me uncomfortable.
I really benefited from the Q&A with Barbara Eder. She was able to solve my dilemma of how truthful the stories were, and sadly, although she did write a framework for the film, the themes that were used were based off of experiences that she'd heard about or saw first hand when she was there. It was neat to hear about the production and how the team used entirely amateur actors who were pretty much acting out their real lives. I had to marvel at their use of gang members.
During the Q&A, Barbara stated that she didn't really have a "message" behind this film. She wanted to share a couple stories and let them speak for themself. I can see that she was successful in her mission, however, as an audience member, I would have liked a little bit of resolution to her storylines as well as more depth for each of the stories. Looking at all of the angles and really examining the issues. I felt like in some ways, although I appreciate the different and strong topics of stories that she chose, they were dealt with in a little bit of an obvious an surface manner.
I'm a little bit unsure of how much I liked this film. Right after it finished, I wasn't completely happy, but as Barbara spoke, I appreciated it more and more. As I said, I was affected by my surroundings during the screening, but all in all, it wasn't a horrible film.

- picture courtesy of www.insideamerica-themovie.com