If 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) in Philip Barantini’s much celebrated Netflix series Adolescence had a soul brother, it could well be the soon-to-turn-16 Liam (Martin Compston) in Ken Loach’s Sweet Sixteen (2002) and, well before that, the 15-year-old Billy Casper (David Bradley) in his 1969 masterpiece Kes.
All the three adolescents, across the span of time, have one significant thing in common: their roots lie in the working class that was disempowered back then, and has perhaps been pushed even farther to the margins now. None of them can quite escape how his place in the social stratum defines and confines his life and fosters a profound restlessness and bottomless angst. The world of social and economic inequities fuels an inner rage, which is as much their own as it is an inheritance down the generations and takes shape in the lap of families that are far from perfect.
Billy finds a speck of hope in falconry and the possibility of a vocation that the education system would otherwise deny him but it’s all too short-lived an option as the future remains a question mark. Having dropped out of school, Liam drifts aimlessly, selling untaxed cigarettes and illegal drugs, dreaming of starting life afresh in a caravan with his jailed mother once she gets released, little realising that his 16th birthday implies that he can now be tried as an adult for his crimes and misdemeanours. The caravan, like Billy’s falconry, remains an illusion—very near and yet so far.
Similarly, Jamie, accused of murdering his classmate Katie, can’t escape his fate. The pent-up working class fury gets unleashed in all its agony, desperation and horror in the epic third episode as he, a plumber’s son—whose home door can be callously broken by the cops and van insensitively defiled by strangers—takes on his posh psychiatrist, Briony Ariston (Erin Doherty). A case of wreaking violence with words in return for the wounds of the heart, mind and soul inflicted by the uncaring privileged.
Jamie’s rage in Adolescence gets magnified with the intrusion of the internet and social media. The virtual world that the young men like him seem to inhabit more than the real and the concomitant expectations it imposes on them in the face of phenomenons like the toxic manosphere, misogynistic influencers, online radicalisation and incel (involuntary celibate) culture.
In a sea of films and series—both from the West and India—about adolescents, that have largely been coming-of-age stories, about teenage crushes and proms, powered by rose-tinted nostalgia for school days and friendships, Kes, Sweet Sixteen and Adolescence stand out by focusing on the more complex explorations of troubled teen psyche where innocence is accompanied with malevolence.
“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport,” wrote Shakespeare in King Lear to underscore the irrational ways of god dealing with humans. Hur Jin-ho’s 2023 South Korean film A Normal Family is an acute exploration of a similar illogicality of violence among teenagers and the darkness that seems to reside deep within their hearts. However, unlike Jamie, Liam and Billy, Hye-yoon (Hong Ye-ji) and Si-ho (Kim Jung-chul) are affluent. In fact, it’s the safety net provided by wealth that turns the kids into monsters and their sense of entitlement desensitises them to violence to a bizarre extent. A Normal Family questions parenting, society, morality and the legal system in creating this macabre ecosystem of feckless brutality among the young.
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster (2023) tries to find answers for crimes of innocence. What is driving the behavioural changes in its young protagonist, the elementary school student Mugino Minato (Soya Kurokawa)? Why is he bullying his classmate? Kore-eda looks at adolescent violence that emerges from not being able to belong, in being an outlier when it comes to issues of identity and sexuality.
In a similar vein, Lukas Dhont’s Close (2022) shows the strong bonds as well as unbridled anger underlying an adolescent friendship in the light of the issues of identity, sexuality and the expectations of masculinity. How the urge to blend in and get accepted can wreak havoc with people and relationships we hold dear.
Rima Das from Assam is perhaps the most consistent Indian filmmaker when it comes to dealing with adolescence, be it in her Village Rockstars 1 and 2, or Bulbul Can Sing. The latter is where her vision gets darker, with her carefree pubescent protagonists, Bulbul (Arnali Das), Bonnie (Banita Thakuria) and Suman (Manoranjan Das), having to contend with the violence of patriarchy and moral policing.
Prithvi Konanur’s Kannada film Hadinelentu 17/18 (Seventeeners, 2022) looks at the dangers of the virtual world for the young with an intimate video of two 12th graders going viral online. But what’s even more subtly threatening is the caste system that they have challenged—Deepa (Sherlyn Bhosale) is Dalit and Hari (Neeraj Mathew), a Brahmin.
In the light of this societal stratification, the closest Jamie, Liam and Billy’s anger depicted in Indian cinema could well be the righteous rage of Jabya (Somnath Awghade) in Nagraj Manjule’s powerful Marathi debut feature, Fandry (2013). Belonging to a family of pig-catchers living on the margins of the society, his forbidden love for the high-caste classmate Shalu (Rajeshwari Kharat) fires his dreams and desires. But can his adolescent love be adequately disruptive and erase the caste differences? A stone hurled in anger by him is not just an act of defiance in love, but a metaphor for the larger resistance of the disempowered against centuries of prejudice and oppression.
(Views are personal)
Namrata Joshi
Consulting Editor
Follow her on X @Namrata_Joshi