Kids

Aggie was kind enough to lend me her copy of Kids, and I got around to watching it last night. I was particularly curious about it, because I recall a friend on a forum I post at writing about their hatred for this movie. I'd looked it up back then and it sounded interesting to me.

As I watched it, I braced myself for something tragic and depressing. And on one had, I did get that. The movie is shot documentary-style, and looks at the lives of the characters over the course of a single day in New York. The characters are all young teenagers, 15, 16, even 13 years old. They experiment with drugs, talk frankly about sex, and drink, among other things. I often have a difficult time relating to films where the young characters are so out of control. My teenage years were very different. They were by no means easy years (in fact, they were probably the hardest of my short life), but I never drank or did drugs or behaved the way these characters did in the film. So I wonder just how accurate the picture painted was. Do teenagers really act like this? Maybe because I was so innocent in that way, it just felt very over the top to me.

One issue I did have with the film is the fact that I couldn't feel anything for any of the characters. It was very sad and shocking subject matter, but I didn't feel emotionally attached to a single character. It was very strange to watch a film so tragic, but feel nothing. At the end of it, I thought the feeling was similar to watching a car accident: you know it's terrible, but sometimes you have a hard time feeling anything, especially if you don't see anyone who is injured. But at the same time, you can't look away.

I thought it was an interesting film, though. I did like the documentary-style of it, and I like that it portrayed a single day in the life of all of the characters. Thanks Aggie!