In this delicate drama set in Utah, three individuals deal with survivor’s guilt a year after a school shooting takes the life of a loved one.
In “The Graduates,” a delicate high-school drama by the writer-director Hannah Peterson, students, teachers and parents grapple with survivor’s guilt a year after a shooting transforms their lives.
We never see the violence. Instead, Peterson’s camera lingers on locker-lined hallways and newly-installed metal detectors, places and objects that bear traces of a tragic past.
This haunted restraint is also what makes the performances so affecting. The film centers on three characters united by their connection to Tyler, one of the shooting’s victims: Genevieve (a stirring Mina Sundwall) was Tyler’s girlfriend; Ben (Alex Hibbert from “Moonlight”), his best friend; and John (John Cho), his father as well as the school’s basketball coach.
Genevieve, a senior, is preparing to graduate, but she feels little excitement for the future. At the same time, Ben has recently moved back to the area after transferring schools, and John is waiting to move to Houston (where his wife and daughter have relocated) until Tyler’s class, specifically his basketball teammates, walk the stage.
“No one knows how to talk about it,” Genevieve says of the shooting and Tyler’s death to her concerned mother (Maria Dizzia). This mental blockage is underscored by a mood of quiet agitation. Naturalistic scenes of typically cheerful teen activities — diner hangouts, lake swims and bike rides through peaceful suburban streets — carry a melancholic undercurrent. And Sundwall, Hibbert and Cho inhabit their parts with a coiled grief while slowly, reassuringly, opening themselves to find hope in camaraderie.
Set in Utah and subtly attentive to its community’s religious values and economic conditions, the film is ultimately narrow in purview, limited to the trauma of losing a loved one without exploring other reasonable shades of emotion: What about the rage victims feel about the seemingly unstoppable recurrence of gun violence in this country? The fear and anxiety of re-entering public life?
Peterson’s script is frustratingly single-note and occasionally bends toward unearned sentimentality. Still, “The Graduates” feels true to its milieu; its emotional clarity impressive given the loaded subject matter and the film’s subdued style.
The Graduates
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
