The We and the I

I just saw this film. It was interesting film. I kept thinking it such a long ride. I had the feeling they were bused from Long Island. I kept thinking that these kids would have hidden some guns in the bushes so when they got mad at each other. Someone would have gotten shot. I thought that most of the kids are in jail or dead, I watched it on tape and because they didn't go hear some of the dialogue.

Best material if you're teaching about BULLYING.

Perfectly pitched and written. So much to relate (and not) to. Plus the rejoicing you get through and at the end of it thanks to the rounded characters' evolution.

Yes, I'm being super biased. Who isn't.

"The We and the I" has sort of a "My Dinner with Andre" feeling. Both movies have the cast members playing themselves in a closed space in New York having conversations, to the point where both movies feel like documentaries. These high school graduates - mostly Black and Latino - discuss a variety of topics, knowing that it might be the last time that they ever see each other, and some shocking things happen along the way.

Michel Gondry is probably best known for "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", about a man who wants part of his memory erased. I would've never guessed that this is from the same person. Either way, it's a good look into the minds of the era's teens. It's not a masterpiece, but it still addresses issues facing these youngsters (note the odd piece of clothing that one girl has to wear). Worth seeing.

The kind of movie you either will like or you won't. I liked it quite a bit for what Michel Gondry was experimenting with, which was a cinema that is both very real and yet fantastic at the same time; when the kids tell their stories, be they funny, dramatic, sad, strange, it carries those qualities Gondry can bring to elevate the material through his grungy-magical (is that a term? I just made it up so there) aesthetic. When we see the teenagers driving a beat-up old car, it's shot to look a little warped as if from a camera phone, but not just any phone.

This isn't reality TV. It's writing and filmmaking and while you won't get stellar acting across the board from these non-professionals, all acting under their own names, some of them are quite good and are able to bring the text to life. It's almost like Speed meets My Dinner with Andre, if that makes sense - you're stuck on this bus for the long haul, and it'll be suspenseful... there will also be a lot of talk, and buffoonery, and, really, genuine emotion at this turning point of the end of a school year with some betrayals and bewilderment going around.

And while the first two-thirds are mostly a lot of fun, the final third, when the bus crowd thins out, becomes even more interesting than it was before when it focuses on Michael and Teresa, and another kid who we haven't seen much of (wrapped up in a comic-book and in headphones), and that scene in particular is great for these guys having (or thinking they have) grown up just on this bus ride alone. It's a heart-to-heart scene that shows after all of the bluster and big talk from the group- in-the-back, being down to earth is the tough part and what makes kids into the outcasts and bullies and bystanders and so on.

It's sometimes rambling, sometimes unfocused, but that too is part of the charm. And, in a sense, this becomes Gondry's most surprising feature in the sense that he isn't with star-power team-ups (Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Gael Garcia Bernal, Seth Rogen, etc), or with his large grab-bag of surreal/magic-fiction camera and mis-en-scene tricks. Not to say there aren't exceptions - at one point, if I'm not mistaken, Jesus comes on to the bus to break up what could be an escalation-cum- fight on the bus - but it's really just a bunch of slices of life strung together, maybe not too unlike Spike Lee's Get on the Bus but without the baggage of the Million-Man-March message. What is it like to be a teenager, not just in the Bronx but anywhere? Teenagers especially would do well to watch a movie like this, which paints a more captivating and, for me at least, entertaining portrait of life than an MTV show could do. It doesn't stop for a chance to be funny, sometimes with ridiculous results, but its got a big heart and that's what is always wonderful about this director.

i have to say that all the kids who played roles in this film just looked natural and performed well. but when i watched this film i also felt deeply disappointed and in despair. watching those kids riding a bus to their high school and what they did and talked to each other or among them only proved one thing: no wonder our American's public high school education is a total failure. looked at those kids in this film, they just looked like a bunch of thugs-in-progress, males or females, they were all the same. there was no one in this film looked well educated. there's nobody in this film worried about their future. those boys, they were a bunch of bullies, young thugs or just lamers. those girls, their conversation really gave me a nauseating feeling. water bras? this is American higher education in the making? is this what we got from high school education? i've tried so hard to sit tight to keep watching it, but every scene, every word or sentence of the dialog disgusted me to the extreme. i just wondered why we have to pay for these thug-like, hole-like kids with a daily free bus ride to school if they didn't and couldn't learn anything from it? this was one of the worst viewing experience i've ever had, maybe just because it was so true, so ugly and so purposeless of our public high school education. i think that only the kids from such bad high schools would enjoy it completely, because it's what they are doing every day right now, not just on a school bus. i was told how bad the education systems in other countries are, but at least they didn't produce so many young thugs like what we saw in this film. there are so many kids in lot of countries they couldn't have normal education when they grow up and really want it, but we American kids just waste it for nothing.