The impact of Coming of Age films.

Coming of Age films have become increasingly popular. They capture some of the most personal and vulnerable moments people can experience and portray them almost ethereally. Coming of Age movies radiate hope and comfort. For the teenagers currently living through a pandemic, they might be happy, hopeful examples of what we might have experienced if ‘normal’ life had continued, and for the quiet introverts writing poems at the back of classes, they might be reassuring representations of people like them.

Coming of Age is defined as a genre that focuses on highlighting the transition from childhood to adulthood. It highlights the good and the bad. The struggles and the happiness.

The characters in Coming of Age films often live through beautiful, nostalgic moments.

Car rides through tunnels and jumping recklessly into lakes, exploring places and reading out poems from worn out books, making mixtapes and typing on typewriters, these characters are looked up to and written about. They’re on posters in rooms with walls painted blue and in the movies we’ve grown to call comfort films, in the moments we wish we’d experienced and the ones we may have experienced, and are reminded of viscerally. They bring out the empathy in us, make us cry in bed with fairy lights on at 1am and make us smile and hope.

But,

These films do more than just create ideologies.

In most of cinema, protagonists are shown to be strong characters who refuse to falter. Characters who are written and edited for perfection. Coming of Age films showcase the imperfections. The anxiety and the feelings. They portray the realisations that come with growing up, how it feels to feel lost, to lose a friend and to find more, to fall in love and fall out of it.

In these little fictional worlds they create for us throughout their runtime, these films create an almost magical world where a protagonist isn’t just characterised by their degree of perfection, but by who they really are, as opposed to the superficial, glamorised and usually unrealistic portrayal of teenagers that is common in cinema.

In these storylines, teenagers are people who are finding themselves and the things they stand up for. People who would protect their friends and, like any other human, make mistakes. People who would protest for the things they believe in and learn to lose, learn to win, learn to love.

To me, Coming of Age movies feel like a warm, candlelit evening by the beach. They feel like the moments I’d love to spend with the people I love most and, with their portrayal of love, almost set standards for the people I’d love to fall in love with. At the same time, I feel for the characters. I want to give them a hug and tell them they’ll be alright and drive around with them.

I want to tell them I know how this ends. You’ll be alright.

These movies, their characters and the soft, hopeful worlds they weave delicately are gorgeous examples of how similar we all are, and how we all have a part of us that wants to touch skies and wish on shooting stars. A part of us that would choose to live in the best of these worlds, a thousand times over.