Speak (film), dir. by Jessica Sharzer

Speak
Directed by Jessica Sharzer
ASIN B000A7Q2I2
Running time: 93 minutes
Showtime Entertainment, 2004

Genre: Film; Drama

Viewer's Annotation:
After being raped the summer before her freshman year of high school, Melinda decides to stop speaking.

Plot Summary
Melinda (Kristen Stewart) enters her freshman year of high school as an outcast; her junior high friends have all joined other cliques, but she belongs nowhere. Her parents (Elizabeth Perkins, D.B. Sweeney) are preoccupied with their jobs, and for the most part her teachers seem at best uninspiring and at worst openly hostile. Miserable, Melinda decides no one would notice if she stopped speaking, so she spends the school year selectively mute, speaking as little as possible.  In flashbacks, we find out that Melinda was raped shortly before school began and told no one. She called the police intending to report the rape, but incurred the wrath of her peers who assumed she was calling them to bust the underage party where it occurred.

As the school year progresses, Melinda sinks downwards and deeper into depression.The only two bright spots in her life are Mr. Freeman, the art teacher who encourages Melinda to express herself through art, and Dave Petrakis, her lab partner, who convinces her that the only way she can truly rebel is to speak up.

Critical Evaluation
Based on the Laurie Halse Anderson book of the same name (and also reviewed in this blog), the film stays largely true to the events of the book.  (Certain small details are changed, such as the location of the rape, probably to make them slightly more cinematic.) Large portions of the dialogue are taken directly from the book. Anderson wrote the book in first person, and much of its text consisted of Bella's unspoken thoughts and observations on the high school world around her.  The movie tries to recreate this, largely effectively, through voiceovers and point-of-view shots.

The movie is especially good at depicting the everyday miseries of high school life; like the book, Melinda's observations about the school, her teachers, and classmates are sardonic and spot-on.  The movie, however, is not quite as good when it comes to depicting Melinda's family life. Her relationship with her parents is more satisfyingly explored in the book, and we understand more why she never told them about the rape. In the movie, however, we don't get a real sense of them as characters, and we don't understand why Melinda feels so fundmentally betrayed by them. 

The character of Mr. Freeman, the art teacher, seems slightly less angry than his book equivalent, yet he is as equally nurturing. Some of the movie's best scenes show Melinda in his classroom, trying to express herself through art.

Because I had read the book just days before watching the movie, it's inevitable that most of my thoughts were about how the two directly compared.  As with almost every book-to-film adaptation, the film suffers from not being able to include nearly as much detail about its characters interior lives. However, as it stands alone, the film is wonderful, moving, and funny, with great performances.

About the director:
Jessica Sharzer, the director, also co-wrote the screenplay. Speak has been the biggest release she's directed, though she is currently at work on a Dusty Springfield biopic starring Kristen Chenoweth.

Curriculum ties:
Rape, depression, social alienation, high school social dynamics, art

Viewing Interest/Level:
The film has been rated PG-13 for "mature thematic material involving a teen rape." It's not graphic, and I think it could be recommended for mature junior high students and up.

Challenge Issues
Though it stays very true to the book, I actually think it would be less likely to be challenged as a film than as a book, perhaps because parents tend to understand and appreciate the MPAA rating system.  The PG-13 rating is appropriate; there are two scenes of violence, though neither is graphic.

Selection Criteria
I stumbled across this DVD in my library's OPAC, when I was looking for the book. Interesting note: there's recently been revived interest in this film, which was a small, independent release, because the actress who plays Melinda, Kristen Stewart, plays Bella in the films based on the Twilight saga.)  There's currently a long wait for it at my local library, so I think it's been discovered both by teens who loved the book and who loved Twilight.