There are events in life that make you ask ‘Why?’ Just as often there are no answers, at least answers that can be summed up in a sentence, a paragraph, an investigation. Why do young people die in car accidents? Why do people fly planes into the side of a building? Why would two boys go through their school and shoot up the place, killing several of their classmates and then themselves? Watch the news, listen to the radio, read the paper – they all bring experts who offer potential answers, but in reality it’s nothing more than going on hunches. Perhaps the most honest moment in Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine comes with shock rocker Marilyn Manson sitting on the floor. When asked what he would say to the students of Columbine High School following the tragic 1999 shooting there, Manson replied with something along the lines of, “Nothing. I’d listen to hear what they had to say.” Today we seem to have experts for anything the media needs a quote for. But when it comes to events like the Columbine shooting, the only possible answers can be related to what happened. The two boys who know why are dead so experts can only speculate.
Paul F. Ryan’s honest and moving Home Room acknowledges that life isn’t simple. It revolves around a school shooting but that’s not what it’s about. It’s about acknowledging there aren’t any. There’s only coping. The film picks up after the event. Seven students are dead. One of them is the shooter. Alicia (Busy Philipps) was his only friend. Alicia herself is an outsider. She’s your typical (from the mass media’s point of view, at least) Goth student: black clothes, lots of make-up that is either very white or very black, a perennial scowl stapled to her face. Regardless, Alicia is one unhappy human being.
With the public looking for clear answers and someone they can pin the crime on, the police scrutinize Alicia to see if she knew the shooting was going to happen ahead of time. If she did and didn’t do anything to stop it, then the police would have their scapegoat. But Alicia’s not the most open person when it comes to her feelings and bottles what she may, or may not, know inside her.
At the school principal’s urging, Alicia begins to pay regular visits to Deanna (Erika Christensen), a survivor of the shooting left with a nasty ricochet off the side of her head and a partially shaved scalp as a short-term souvenir. Deanna is Alicia’s doppelganger. She’s smart; she’s perky; her parents gave her a swanky convertible for her birthday. From an outsider’s perspective, pre-shooting Deanna had the ideal teenage upbringing.
The two girls are totally different people and, in turn, they don’t click together right away. Despite the visual scars, Deanna wants nothing more than to be happy and hang out with someone other than the hospital staff and her parents. Alicia is more into silence. Happiness makes her grumpy. Although the police are around throughout the film looking for answers into the shooting, Ryan puts most of the focus on how the students are coping with the ordeal. The relationship that Deanna and Alicia forge is the fascinating part of the movie as it allows for a genuine search for truth instead of something that is forced or contrived. As resolution comes about (not so much in the concrete sense), things do get a little melodramatic and perhaps even a little convenient but Home Room never stops being honest. Strong performances from Philipps and Christensen certainly help matters as more attention is paid to discussion than to action. Their talks show strong emotion and the overriding sadness and sense of loss that sits in the film’s subtext never disappears.
Nobody will ever be able to fully understand why the Columbine shootings occurred. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t look for answers. Thousands of people continue to be affected by the actions of two deeply disturbed boys several years later. In the end, coping is a personal thing that we can help each other even though we can never fully understand exactly what the person next to you is going through. Ultimately I think that’s what Home Room is all about and does best.
Home Room Gallery
Trailer
