Boy Erased is the second movie about the trauma of conversion therapy I’ve seen this year. But unlike The Miseducation of Cameron Post, this one’s based on a specific true story. It’s also about more than just conversion therapy, dealing with the relationship between a boy and his family who don’t accept him, and his own journey into accepting himself, meaning it covers a little more ground than the earlier film. However both of these films offer something the other doesn’t, and are great if unintentional companion pieces really. And both are advocating the same important message, Boy Erased just a tad more explicitly so.
The experience of Gerrard Conley is chronicled through Jared Eamons (Lucas Hedges), who is registered in the Love in Action gay conversion therapy program after coming out to his Baptist minister car salesman father (Russell Crowe) and hairstylist mother (Nicole Kidman). Though initially expressing a genuine desire to be cured of his homosexuality, Jared immediately comes to question the secretive and brutal practices enforced by head “therapist” Victor Sykes (Joel Edgerton). As he grapples with this, he reflects on his family life and significant intimate encounters.
Edgerton is also the director of this film, and rather than approaching the story with the prison movie tone of Desiree Akhaven, directs it with more the clinical, contextual manner of a documentary. Love in Action isn’t immediately hostile, with a set-up and structure not unlike a support group, though one propagating lies. And this is in reflection of Jared’s attitude towards the conversion therapy at the outset: apprehensive but open-minded. The key difference between Boy Erased and Cameron Post is that while the titular character of the latter was at God’s Promise against her will, resistant to it and its objective for the duration of her time there, here Jared goes into the program believing in gay conversion, already largely conditioned against his sexuality. The movie shows that even with that mindset its difficult to ignore and justify the clear misinformation, deceitfulness, invasiveness, and abuse of such organizations. For Jared it has, if anything, the opposite effect. There are intense, gruelling moments, expectedly tough to watch, venting and punishment ordeals so ridiculous that they become horrifying. Edgerton depicts Love in Action with the austerity of a cult and its misery is palpable in the dimness of the facility and the explosive temper of Sykes.
But while the conversion therapy is the centrepiece of the movie, the greater story is really that of Jared’s journey to sexual liberation. His family and college life are examined, including three relationships prior to winding up at Love in Action, the first with a girl in his same congregation -this movie accurately depicts the parental attempts at matchmaking that goes on in certain church communities. And this road itself isn’t without hardships, including one particularly brutal experience that partly lands him in this program. The film connects this backstory mostly to the “moral inventory” Jared is required to keep, logging the potential sources of his gay thoughts and urges. But it creates a fuller sense of his character, his reasons for resisting his sexuality, and his complex emotional state.
All of which are conveyed with outstanding authenticity from Lucas Hedges in his first starring role, giving his best performance since Manchester by the Sea and further earning his reputation as one of the very best actors of his generation. He completely carries the movie, is effortlessly sympathetic and unusually subtle. And he excels in scenes that would be tough for some veteran actors, going toe to toe with a few impressive ones. I find it a little amusing that three of the four major characters of this film are played by Australians doing American accents. However Crowe is really good as the terribly misguided father wanting to love his son but unable to look past his own prejudice; and Edgerton makes for a great hateful antagonist (between this and The Gift he seems to like playing the villains of his own movies) with Flea as his intimidating goon. But it’s Nicole Kidman who especially shines with a very relatable performance in spite of her vaguely Dolly Parton look and accent, and is gifted with a strong and satisfying character arc. Jared’s fellow program attendees aren’t as well developed though. Xavier Dolan and Troye Sivan have inklings of character as the one trying too hard and the one trying to fake it respectively. But you don’t feel for them nearly as much as the victims of Cameron Post, most of whom were better defined. Of course Jared doesn’t have anyone he’s really close to at Love in Action. Boy Erased is more focussed on the individual experience with conversion therapy while Cameron Post was about its broader toxicity -another reason they excellently compliment each other.
Unlike Cameron Post though, which was set in the ‘90s, Boy Erased takes place in the modern day, and conversion therapy has still not been banned in North America. Thus these are very necessary movies, the trauma portrayed within continuing to be inflicted by backwards-thinking institutions. Boy Erased is a terrific movie about the experience of someone who managed to survive conversion therapy and make a fulfilling life for themselves. Not everyone who goes through it is as lucky.
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jbosch/
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