Film ReviewsWe the Animals: A Pack of One
Sep 19, 2018 Anchorage Press
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Justin Torres’ novel “We the Animals” comes to life under the direction of Jeremiah Zagar. On its own, the movie is quiet and emotionally compelling, and develops in a way that is visually and intellectually interesting and contemplative. When considered in the context of the novel, the narrative and timeline is adjusted for cinema but the core and the heart of the film reflect the written work in a truthful manner. Torres bases the story on his experiences but this is not an autobiography, exactly.
The story in We the Animals is about a family comprised of the mother and father, and their three sons that are close in age but worlds apart. The vantage point of We the Animals is from the youngest son who in the film is named Jonah. As the youngest of the three, Jonah is seemingly passive, observing the family’s oppressive struggle, and following his brothers into all sorts of play and mischief. The parents are young and hard-working but stuck in low-paying jobs, working night shifts, with few benefits and even less options. The young family doesn’t seem to catch a break in anyway, and this is compounded by the volatile relationship between the adults, which seeps into the kids’ reality and fantasies. The narrative is composed of layer upon layer of complex emotions, that in the end weighs on them, individually and as a family unit.
The casting is as important as the narrative in We the Animals; reportedly, the casting team interviewed over a thousand kids and it took over a year to find the right mix of actors. The result is an on-screen family that looks and feels like a real family with interactions that bring out the similarities and contrasts between them, the beauty and hidden monsters. The father is played by Raúl Castillo. Castillo delivers a complex character that viewers love and hate. Not only is he handsome and feels deeply, but his intermittent loss of control drives the family deeper into despair. The mother, played by Sheila Vand, is a much more passive character but when she delivers, or rather when she demands to be seen, then she is as big as a presence as the father. To prepare the cast to depict the insulated family on the screen, the director had the actors live together for a period of time, which helped build trust between them, making the delivery of strong and sometimes physically violent scenes believable and compelling. The boys are Joel (Josiah Gabriel), Manny (Evan Rosado), and Jonah (Isaiah Kristian), the young actors are newcomers with great potential and desire to diversity the big screen.
The family has to navigate a world filled with economic and social pressures. For the boys, matters of identity abound, from race to sexuality. The nature of the Jonah’s gaze is passive, always looking up at the adults, at the stars, and his brothers, but the eye of the director never loses focus of him. When Jonah individuates, he doe so in a way that does not any prescribed narrative. In the written work, Jonah’s state of mind is described in his observations and throughout the novel, a quality that makes the novel flow, but translating this to the screen is risky and often impossible. A cinematic device that is often effective in this kind of structure is a voiceover; but so much of the aesthetics and visual flow of We the Animals rely on the long takes and quiet but symbolic gestures, so a voiceover would be intrusive and break the contemplative nature of Jonah’s character. To address, the filmmakers expand the Jonah’s imaginative tool, his journal, and expand it to reflect his state of mind via his own illustrations though animation segments that reveal the depths of his perceptions. The technique is highly effective and also beautiful, so that by the end of the film it is these illustrations that become a literal testimony of Jonah’s transformation, a transformation that is also a point of no return, the tender bitterness of coming out.
Bear Tooth
We the Animals
R for strong sexual content, nudity, language and some underage drug and alcohol use
Monday 9/24 at 2:00 PM and 7:50 PM
The story in We the Animals is about a family comprised of the mother and father, and their three sons that are close in age but worlds apart. The vantage point of We the Animals is from the youngest son who in the film is named Jonah. As the youngest of the three, Jonah is seemingly passive, observing the family’s oppressive struggle, and following his brothers into all sorts of play and mischief. The parents are young and hard-working but stuck in low-paying jobs, working night shifts, with few benefits and even less options. The young family doesn’t seem to catch a break in anyway, and this is compounded by the volatile relationship between the adults, which seeps into the kids’ reality and fantasies. The narrative is composed of layer upon layer of complex emotions, that in the end weighs on them, individually and as a family unit.
The casting is as important as the narrative in We the Animals; reportedly, the casting team interviewed over a thousand kids and it took over a year to find the right mix of actors. The result is an on-screen family that looks and feels like a real family with interactions that bring out the similarities and contrasts between them, the beauty and hidden monsters. The father is played by Raúl Castillo. Castillo delivers a complex character that viewers love and hate. Not only is he handsome and feels deeply, but his intermittent loss of control drives the family deeper into despair. The mother, played by Sheila Vand, is a much more passive character but when she delivers, or rather when she demands to be seen, then she is as big as a presence as the father. To prepare the cast to depict the insulated family on the screen, the director had the actors live together for a period of time, which helped build trust between them, making the delivery of strong and sometimes physically violent scenes believable and compelling. The boys are Joel (Josiah Gabriel), Manny (Evan Rosado), and Jonah (Isaiah Kristian), the young actors are newcomers with great potential and desire to diversity the big screen.
The family has to navigate a world filled with economic and social pressures. For the boys, matters of identity abound, from race to sexuality. The nature of the Jonah’s gaze is passive, always looking up at the adults, at the stars, and his brothers, but the eye of the director never loses focus of him. When Jonah individuates, he doe so in a way that does not any prescribed narrative. In the written work, Jonah’s state of mind is described in his observations and throughout the novel, a quality that makes the novel flow, but translating this to the screen is risky and often impossible. A cinematic device that is often effective in this kind of structure is a voiceover; but so much of the aesthetics and visual flow of We the Animals rely on the long takes and quiet but symbolic gestures, so a voiceover would be intrusive and break the contemplative nature of Jonah’s character. To address, the filmmakers expand the Jonah’s imaginative tool, his journal, and expand it to reflect his state of mind via his own illustrations though animation segments that reveal the depths of his perceptions. The technique is highly effective and also beautiful, so that by the end of the film it is these illustrations that become a literal testimony of Jonah’s transformation, a transformation that is also a point of no return, the tender bitterness of coming out.
Bear Tooth
We the Animals
R for strong sexual content, nudity, language and some underage drug and alcohol use
Monday 9/24 at 2:00 PM and 7:50 PM