By Geno McGahee
I usually add some humor to my film reviews, but I’m going to have a hard time here. I just watched BOY ERASED, a movie concerning one of the most controversial practices of religion: gay conversion.
Jared Eamons (Lucas Hedges) is an 18-year-old that is going through a tremendous struggle as he comes to terms with his sexuality and being the son of a Baptist preacher that preaches against homosexuality. His father, Marshall (Russell Crowe), fights the idea immediately, pushes for his son to become an item with a girl from the church and is very nervous with what it would mean for his family and his position. He cannot have a gay son.
After an incident at college where Jared is raped by another guy in his dorm, he comes out to his parents and the plan is hatched. Marshall meets up with some of the elders of the church and the plan is now to send Jared to a gay conversion school to change him to straight through the good book.
At the school, we meet Victor Sykes (Joel Edgerton), a man with some very strange methods. Now, I loved Edgerton in WARRIOR. I was screaming at the TV as I watched him fight and win, even though it was just a movie. After watching him play Sykes, I wanted to see him thrown off a cliff. What an actor Edgerton is. I was surprised to find out that he wrote this for the screen and directed it. Edgerton is a man of many talents and nails this one in a big way.
Initially, Jared buys into the idea that he is broken and that he needs to be fixed through conversion and the classes are terribly brutal and aggressive. He starts to find himself and sees the nonsense in front of him. After watching the treatment of Cameron (Britton Sear), another gay guy going through the process, Jared begins to rebel and wants out of the program. His father insists that he continues while his mother, Nancy (Nicole Kidman), falls back on her natural instincts to protect her child, rescuing him from the madness.
The conflict between Jared and Marshall continues and it’s a tough battle with both sides not giving much ground. It needed to get bad before it could turn around and it does turn around. This film is all about broken people and a fight with faith and life meaning. This film really captures the damage that religion can do without condemning religion as a whole. I remember watching JESUS CAMP and wanting to catch that fat lady and throw her in front of a train, but every religion has its fringes and that is sort of put out here pretty well. Nancy, keeping her faith, while supporting her son and his life, helped her husband do the same and I think that’s the best case scenario. Everyone was able to be themselves without a total compromise.
BOY ERASED does a great job in showing the madness of the gay conversion process. It is an intense film that you will probably watch once, say it was great, and never watch it again. It hits you hard and I think that most can relate to this in one way or another. I grew up Catholic and saw a lot of madness there and could see that the wrong people running the show could have made it a lot worse. There is plenty of room to take any concept or belief, religious or not, and twist it and create a lot of misery. It’s been seen in cults.
I highly recommend this film. It is a tremendous drama that pulls no punches and just puts out the information and experiences of Jared in an honest way, exposing the madness that is gay conversion and the struggles that a religious family has when encountering a family member that is something that they have been taught to rebel against.
So, if you want to get angry, get upset and have a great deal of anxiety in your movie experience, this is for you.
