A series of unlearned lessons

What conclusions can be drawn from the excitement around the “transitional age” - the story of a boy accused of killing a peer

The British criminal mini-series "Transitional Age" about the investigation of a 13-year-old boy accused of killing a girl from his own school, a society stirred up. In Britain, the Prime Minister meets the authors of the series, Netflix makes free viewing in schools, and Russian-speaking media call him “one of the main series of the year” and find out how real the reality shown in it is.

The storm of reactions was also among ordinary spectators - from alarmed parental comments to a mass discussion of teenage education. The film critic Katya Stepnaya tells what artistic features of the “transitional age” caused such a stir and what preliminary conclusions from public discussions we can draw.

Neglyan faces

Spectators are tired of glossy faces. From 23-year-old adults playing 15-year-olds. From the casting of similar heirs of acting families and the constant appearance in the frame of the same actors who played in some franchise the day before yesterday, and today they portray someone's parents. In this sense, the “transitional age” (like other British broadcasting of a year ago - “deer” ) offers the audience not only an unusual British accent and vocabulary, but also fresh persons, very similar to those whom we see every day: children, their parents, neighbors, teachers and police officers. The usual faces of the poor middle class, not spoiled by year -round filming and posing for magazines.

Young Owen Cooper, playing the protagonist Jamie, is only one and a half years older than his character: an ordinary child, in vulnerability, confusion and vengeful of which is very easy to believe. As in the existential crisis of his father Eddie, part -time not only the actor, but also the creator of the series Stephen Graham. By the way, Graham himself comes from a poor provincial family of a nurse and a social worker and clearly understands what story and about whom he is filming. Testamically, the series is based on real events, but in order for the project to resonate with each viewer, this is not enough: we must go down from heaven to earth, live in an ordinary area, go to an ordinary school, communicate with ordinary police and teachers.

In the authenticity of “transitional age”, probably, there is its striking competitive advantage. As in dialogues in British English, very different from the mainstream American dialect.

The “transitional age” does not open anything new to those who are well acquainted with the traditions of British and Irish social cinema: films of Ken Louch, T -shirt Lee, Andrei Arnold, Martin McDona, Shane Medouza. But the series introduces the new spectators to Kitchen Sink Realism, the squeeze of a realistic movie about the poor, which is translated into a Russian comic-nelnic formulation “Drama of the kitchen sink” or “School of the kitchen sink”. In general, films about how they survive, live and understand life around themselves people without privileges.

Continuous shooting

Another convex technique of “transitional age” is the effect of continuous shooting with one frame, according to which, according to the creators of the series, all four episodes were shot with whole doubles from several attempts. While skeptics argue that in some scenes, invisible gluing can be allowed, the project operator Matthew Lewis talks in detail about the pre -production, the British Netflix shares the photo of the filming process, and the assistant from the installation team tells a wide audience why even the installation project still needs installation.

Not an innovative, but technically complex solution attracted spectators tired of galloping personnel from most action and detectives. For the psychological setness, on which the atmosphere of “transitional age” is built, the effect of continuous shooting is an effective solution that helps to bring the conversational story closer to tactile experience, to make something distant and abstract close and dangerous. Judging by the reaction of the audience, the authors succeeded.

Panic and triggers

If ten years ago everyone was scared by the incomprehensible generation of Zumers with superpowers with empathy and difficulties with concentration, now the time has come about the Alpha generation, which marketers position as “generation of artificial intelligence” and “technological leaders of the future”. It is believed that summarizing the whole generation by year of birth is no more evidence than attribute features according to the signs of the zodiac. But one feature of Alpha generation is quite accurate - instant digital dependence on gadgets if they are at the disposal of the child.

Screens really stimulate the brain more intensively than a book, a film or a board game, addictive and instantly take possession of the attention of the child. Not a single attentive parent is able to compete with a hundred fascinating notifications from different applications. The already existing psychological distance between parents and children is rapidly increasing due to the difference in communication media. To the typical parental panic “We do not understand our children” (inherent in every generation of parents), reasonable fears are added: a virtual space that is not regulated by the law thoroughly (or regulated with late) is really dangerous. Minors are easily abused by adults, blackmailing of peers, or influence from the influiencers unknown to parents.

Actually, this is what happens to the hero Jamie, for whom

The manifestos of the community of feminine-impenders reflect his limited personal and unhappy social experience.

As you know, adolescents are jealous of personal space, and during a psychological separation from parents it is easier for them to trust other people's people at their choice, and not family or educators who are assigned the system. At a time when the language of aggression sounds from the leaders of the states, and people clothed by the authorities broadcast Darwinian and anti -human attitudes, it is very difficult to contrast them with their own imperfect example in the eyes of children.

How to protect a child from the corrupting influence of virtual opinion leaders is an open and, it seems, in principle, an unnecessary issue. The removal of gadgets (which, for example, offers one of the creators of the series), parental control, a child psychologist, personal data protection or a confidential conversation at the family table-can something of this save the child from an aggressive environment? Where then respect for his independence? Or is the choice of control over freedom - the manifestation of parental responsibility? Whatever the good parent you are, this can still be insufficient: everything is impossible to foresee. This is terrible and painful knowledge for everyone who lives with children in different information bubbles.

Broken social system

The “transitional age” presses everyone in a sore spot - a question that is not solved by a brief public discussion and, it seems, does not have a consensus at all. The system of education and education, invented in the 20th century, is hopelessly outdated in most countries - technologically, economically and socially. Neither kindergartens, nor schools, nor universities with time spent on them and budgets are preparing adolescents for adulthood: neither theoretical knowledge, nor social skills, nor the ability to show individual talents.

A public agreement that parents go to work and pay taxes, while gardens, schools, camps and interests have been careing about their children have long stopped working. Standard education does not take into account the characteristics of the psyche of children, and in educational institutions there are catastrophically lacking and loving children of specialists with professional ethics. Social workers, teachers, educators are most often burnt and overloaded people crushed by the bureaucracy, the schedule of lessons and their own problems. Putting the child even to a “good” school for 8-12 hours a day, parents cannot be sure that they will receive something besides a certificate of education at the exit.

What can Jamie and his peers teach at school? That power is in force. That adults do not have time to interfere in “children's affairs”, and if you turn to them for advice or help, most likely, it is worth waiting for punishment.

That only cunning and dodgy survive. That persecution is the norm through which each child passes (or he poisons himself, or poison him).

People who make state and system decisions do not talk about this in their pre -election speeches: their list of topics - wars, money, taxes, sanctions, one -time payments. Both Jamie and his parents have no place in such a picture of the world. 99 percent of people have no place there. So both the monologues of the incidents and school persecution, and the feeling of in vain living life is just a crooked mirror of what Jamie and his parents know about their skin. In the mass trend of disconnection, a cruel attack on the same age no longer seems to be an extremist act. That is why the main character of “transitional age” is not a psychopath, but an ordinary teenager who has learned that there are no rules, but adults who invented the rules themselves do not fulfill them.