We The Animals (2018)

During the last decade, there have been many indie films of a small to minimal budget that tell the story of people who face economic and/or social marginalization, mainly told from the point of view of a child or a teenager. These films resonated with the critics and with wider audiences than they dared hope for. They include (chronologically) "Winter’s Bone" (2010), "Beasts of the Southern Wild" (2012), "Tangerine" (2015), "The Florida Project" (2017), culminating with last year's surprise Best Picture Oscar winner, "Moonlight". We have two such movies this year, Debra Granik's long-awaited follow-up to "Winter’s Bone", "Leave No Trace", as well as a film directed by Jeremiah Zagar, who had until then only directed documentaries and shorts. The film is based on the loosely autobiographical novel by Justin Torres, "We the Animals". This is also the film's title. I watched it a couple of hours ago, found it thoroughly fulfilling - and have decided to talk to you about it. There will be some spoilers - I'll try not to overdo it though.

"We the Animals", which takes place in the 1980s, tells the story of Jonah (an amazing first-time actor Evan Rosado), a nine-year-old at the film's start, along with his older brothers, Manny and Joel (two also great first-time child actors, Isaiah Kristian, and Josiah Gabriel), and their volatile parents (exquisite acting by "Looking"'s breakthrough Raúl Castillo and Sheila Vand).

The family's very modest house is surrounded by picturesque forests, rivers, and lakes (it was filmed in upstate New York). This beautiful landscape sometimes contrasts this family's shoestring existence and more often illustrates the characters' feelings, whether they be joy, love, pain, anger, or frustration.

The father works as a security guard, a Puerto Rican with an easy and charming personality but also equally easy and often chilling outbursts of anger. He drifts from job to job, as he drifts in and out of his family's life. It is not explicitly stated but it is heavily implied that racial bias has something to do with his professional instability.

Race lingers on the movie's outer limits. When Dustin (Giovanni Pacciarelli), the blond older boy that is Jonah's love interest, calls Jonah a Mexican and Jonah protests that he isn't, Dustin bares his white arm and compares it to Jonah's brown one. "Anyway, you are more Mexican than I am", he says, as if "Mexican" is a skin tone and not a nationality.

The mother, a white girl from Brooklyn who was impregnated by her future husband as a teenager, works in a factory and is prone to bouts of depression, most of which are related to her husband's behavior. At one point she stays in bed for days, leaving the boys to fend for themselves. 

The children are the film's beating heart. They are originally very close to each other, which is as much sibling love as well as a defense mechanism for the dangers that surround them. The scenes where they hug and chant "Body Heat! Body Heat!" are endearing. Then, as they enter adolescence, they begin growing apart: the opening rift is especially evident between the older brothers and Jonah, who is gradually realizing his same-sex attraction. He acts on this attraction - and eventually is subject to an involuntary coming out. I won't say more, because - spoilers.

 The film is full of powerful scenes: the boys role-playing their parents on the phone, a terrifying swimming lesson in the middle of a dark stream, the voyeuristic experience of the boys witnessing the parents engaged in intimacy from behind a shower curtain, a family ride in the new truck, and then a ride in the same truck which has broken down and is being towed, at the same day that the father had lost his job.

"While Zagar doesn’t force the material into many surprising places, it’s a fully realized tapestry, owing much to the complex, layered score by Nick Zammuto that hums through nearly every scene, and frequent cutaways to hand-drawn animation based on the scrapbook that Jonah stores under his bed at night. These wild crayon doodles say far more about the intensity of the child’s psychological struggles than any words he could offer up, and the filmmakers help him along. Cinematographer Zak Mulligan’s camera floats alongside the family, often at eye level with the petite Jonah, and the gentle light evokes the ephemeral nature of his life." (Eric Kohn, IndieWire.)

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 91% based on 74 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Dreamlike and haunting, We the Animals approaches the coming-of-age odyssey with a uniquely documentarian eye." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 83 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

This is the film's trailer:

This is a short "making of" with interviews of the movie's delightful young protagonists:

This is Justin Torres, on whose novel the film is based, talking about a key moment in his life:

These are Raúl Castillo (the movie dad) & the film's director, Jeremiah Zagar, discussing the film:

Nick Zammuto composed an excellent soundtrack. This is a short review:

You can listen to the whole soundtrack if you click here. I especially like the closing song, Nobody's Baby, which is sung a cappella by one of the film's young actors, Josiah Gabriel.

Knowing me, you know that I always want to use songs in my stories. Some scenes in the film made me think about certain songs. (Minor spoilers follow). Here are the songs:

The film's finale inspired me to think of Paul Simon's Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard:

When dad is fired from his job, I thought of King Harvest (Has Surely Come) by The Band:

When the children watch the sexy video, I recalled Randy Newman's Let's Burn Down The Cornfield:

The scene where the mother asks her youngest to always remain a kid for her sake brought to mind Billie Holiday's God Bless The Child:

When Jonah and Dustin kiss, my mind drifted to The Crystals' Then He Kissed Me:

As Jonah is returning home, after that kiss, I thought of Lou Reed's Coney Island Baby:

The scene in which the mother takes the children with her in an attempt to leave her husband made me think of Tori Amos' Me And A Gun:

To avoid any misunderstandings, none of these songs' words exactly correspond to the movie's content. It is more of a "free association" reaction on my part. So, don't try to make direct comparisons between these songs' lyrics and the content of the film. It's more abstract than that.

The bottom line is that "We The Animals" is a great film and that you should really watch it, whether you are straight or gay. Trust me.