Thirteen (2003)

THIRTEEN
****  (out of ****)
a film review by
Richard A. Zwelling

Knowing that Thirteen was written and directed by fledgling artists with small resumes, it is a great film. With the knowledge that this is director Catherine Hardwicke's very first feature, and that screenwriter Nikki Reed was only 14 years old when she wrote the script, the film is absolutely astounding.

I love films that force me to think about people and situations I would normally not come into contact with and demand that I invest emotionally in characters under unenviable circumstances. The most brilliant thing about Thirteen is the way the writing, the directing, and the cinematography blend together interdependently to take the audience deep into the troubled mind of a struggling seventh-grader. There is nothing unfamiliar about this story. There is, however, something extraordinarily rare in the unflinching manner the story is told.

As we start the film, Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood) is a normal troubled 13-year-old who hangs out with two close friends that are considerate and encouraging, despite their exclusion from the middle-school "elite". The moment Tracy steps foot on school campus for her seventh-grade year, she is bombarded by derision from all angles. Her clothes aren't stylish enough and her figure is too lanky. Some talk to her, only to belittle her, but mostly she is ignored by the boys (who spend their time ogling the girls who have "grown-up" over the summer) and the girls (who have come prepared to flaunt their newly voluptuous bodies).

Enter Evie Zamora (Nikki Reed) who is the most sexually appealing girl in school. When Tracy decides that she is tired of being an outcast, she looks to Evie as her key to ingratiating herself amongst the hip crowd. Evie, of course, is deliberately cruel to her at first, and it is only when Tracy resorts to illegal activity that Evie decides that Tracy is up to her standards. Tracy's encounters with Evie, who we learn has a troubled past and is ruthlessly manipulative as a result, begin a downward spiral of self-destructive, licentious activity that quickly turn Tracy from an innocent, self-conscious girl to a frenzied, uncontrollable monster.

Personally, I have been in Tracy's initial position. I was the reclusive student who was always put down for my outward appearance, and knowing now how disgustingly superficial all the belittlements were, I wanted to plead with Tracy to be herself and keep composing her poetry and doing well in school. Sadly, I knew that even if I were there to do this in person, it would not help. One of the inexplicable tragedies captured so well in the film is the insularity of the middle-school world where one is convinced that there is no beyond and that the most important thing in life is to be popular.

Unlike Tracy, I did not have a fragmented family to contend with, and as we see more of her home life, we begin to see her actions as potentially inevitable. Her mother Melanie (Holly Hunter), despite being a loving mother, is often oblivious to her daughter's needs and concerns. She runs a business in the house, and most of the time she is there, she is attending to clients. The reason for this is that she is divorced and Tracy's father is behind on child-support payments.

In a scene of infuriating truthfulness, we finally see the father come to the decrepit house to "attend" to Tracy's problems. He pulls up in his luxury vehicle and waltzes into the house to attempt a quick cure for a family he rarely bothers to see. Of course, it does not take long for his pagers and cell phones to draw him back to "better" things, and he genuinely cannot understand the disgust he's greeted with when he asks someone to quickly sum up, in just a few words, what the problem is. The only person Tracy has as a father figure is Melanie's lover Brady (Jeremy Sisto), who spends his time bouncing from one halfway house to another.

One would view Tracy's studies and her poetry as tools of escape and creative outlet, but when she reads a poem to her mother, Melanie barely takes notice for a brief moment before retreating to her daily bustle (and giving Tracy the empty promise that they will discuss the poem later). At school, we see the teachers who mean well and try to keep order, but often cannot compete with the unruliness of their students.

In an all-too-familiar world like this (one that we hear much about, but rarely witness first-hand), Tracy is free-floating in oblivion with no source of stability or identity. It is a bitter truth that only exacerbates the bleak picture of American school-life today, where sex is a manipulative tool, teachers have diminishing control, and single-parent families are on the rise. I only shudder to think about how much of this film comes from Nikki Reed's own experience.

From a technical standpoint, there are two prominent features. The first is a hand-held digital camera, which gives a relentless semi-documentary feel and provides an intimacy that is both necessary and extremely uncomfortable. The second is the lighting scheme which employs unflattering, bleached hues. These both combine to prove marvelously effective in reflecting upon the characters' fractured psychologies.

Reed's script is phenomenal for its keen ear for vernacular and its incisive take on the wounds these children carry (both physical and psychological) and then try to pretty-up with name-brand clothing and sexual promiscuity. Evan Rachel Wood gives a remarkable performance that undoubtedly called for her to place herself psychologically in areas that most adults would not want to touch. Holly Hunter is relentlessly successful as the caring, yet inattentive mother and is required to do a nude scene that is far below the glamour of her flattering work in The Piano.

By the film's final five minutes, I was struggling to hold back tears. At the conclusion, there is an undeniable catharsis, yet we are not given full closure, and it is the audience's job to interpret what will happen in the future. Yet despite the horrid events that take place during the film's duration, there is a welcome undertone of optimism that accompanies the final minutes, and it is during this moment of serenity that we feel, for the first time, that things might end up being okay for Tracy and her family.

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X-RAMR-ID: 35878
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1202219
X-RT-TitleID: 1124997
X-RT-AuthorID: 7583
X-RT-RatingText: 4/4