oneirophrenia | Home Room

Jesus F. Christ--I just watched one of the best films I think I've ever seen: Home Room. It is, beyond any shadow of a doubt, one of the hardest films to watch that I've ever sat through. It's about the aftermath of a school shooting, but it's not an Afterschool Special Only Better--it's a very, very brutal, honest, and uncompromising character study of two girls, a Goth chick (played by Busy Phillips [what a goofy name]) who may have had some foreknowledge of the attack and a brainy, monied Daddy's girl (Erika Christensen), who both survived the shooting....Two astonishingly good performances. Astonishingly. All I knew about Erika Christensen was that she was also in Swimfan, which I haven't seen, mainly because it seems to me as though it's just a goofy teenybopper version of Fatal Attraction; and I had no idea who Busy Phillips was--so I really didn't know what to expect from this movie. That's probably why it flattened my ass like a runaway dumptruck: I was expecting a movie about a school shooting that would probably be fairly shallow and end with the moral that "We should all just get along so this kind of shit won't happen," not a film that actually challenges viewers to wonder about the significance of human suffering with the incredible line:

"Maybe it all doesn't mean shit."

Like I said, it is not an easy film to watch, especially if you can find yourself identifying with any of the characters (and oddly enough, I kind of identified with both--worldweary Goth chick and alienated genius chick)....

And I say again: thank the gods that I'm not a highschool teacher.