American Teen

American Teen is a documentary filmed in Warsaw, IN. It follows about 5 teenagers at different stages of their senior year. There's a very likeable star basketball player, who's pressured by his father to make as many points as possible so that he can get a scholarship (because the family can't afford to send him to college). There's an awkward outsider, someone who basically loves video games and doesn't have much of a social life, but desperately wants a girlfriend. He fantasizes about his own life being a video game so that he can be a good-looking hero who defeats monsters and saves the girl, who falls in love with him. There's also an artsy girl, an "in-between," neither popular nor unpopular. She finds herself extremely depressed after a difficult breakup, also falling for a guy she didn't expect to (a jock), and she's constantly dreaming of going to college in California to become a movie director and making movies people will remember the rest of their lives. Another teenager is kind of a prep. Her life is centered around dealing with the death of her brother, trying to maintain friendships, and getting accepted to Notre Dame. The others in the documentary are somewhat just related to the previously mentioned characters.

So how do I critique this (as my uncle asked after it was over)? Well, my answer is that I enjoyed it, but it's difficult to critique. It's a cinema verite style documentary, meaning it's focus is not on cinematography or the director's position, but just hearing directly from people and editing it together. It seeks truth, to not slight what these teens were going through. Although I would say this documentary is not truly cinema verite. There are moments when the director does have some input, always as an after effects sequence where it illustrates what the teenagers are talking about. And they were pretty good. They were funny at times, and it broke up the dialogue very nicely. Speaking of breaking up the dialogue, I think the editting was a definate strong point of the doc.

So it was good. I enjoyed it-> and i think it's fairly representative of high school around the country, not just Warsaw (though there would definately be some differences across the country). While watching it, it was like "Oh, yeah. I remember why I didn't want to go to prom, why i didn't go to the basketball games, why I was nervous about picking my major and where to go to college."

Having said all of that, American Teen just kind of ends like that. It seems like it could be more. It was good, but I don't know how someone could justify calling it 'really good' or 'great.' But I guess that's my own personal opinion towards cinema verite documentaries in general. I seen several, and all of them were good, but I wouldn't call any of them 'great.' I personally seem to enjoy the ones which have more of a plot, ones with art direction or some interaction between the director and whatever the subject matter is. I mean, that's where using creativity to show something that you think is really cool (as a director) can be captivating. And some actually think that cinema verite is the only true documentary form. I just think it can be so limiting that you can really miss out on making a really cool documentary in the process. But i appreciate the goals of cinema verite directing-> to not misrepresent people or events, but to show them as they are. But my personal tastes i guess are slighted towards something more cinematic, more 3-dimensional.

American Teen is a good cinema verite style documentary following 5 or so teenagers during their senior year of high school. Definately worth watching. If nothing else, it's sure to be nostalgic.