Educating Boys on Healthy Manhood
Clutching swords, the two boys anxiously whisper to each other in guarded tones; the pursuing army is nearby, and these young auxiliaries dare not reveal their hiding place. After some quick planning and mutual reassurance, the boys decide to make a run for it, and burst out of their hidden bunker into a headlong sprint across the countryside. The bright sun splashes across their faces, now stretched by enormous grins as the boys revel in the joy of their escape and their freedom.
These boys are not child soldiers, but two 13 year-olds indulging in fantasy play during the last, sweet days of their summer vacation. So goes the opening scene of Close, a Belgian film nominated for the Oscar as this year’s best foreign language film. Directed by Lukas Dhont, Close tells the story of Léo and Rémi, best friends who see their direct, trusting, emotionally-devoted connection increasingly challenged, stigmatized, and threatened by their peers as they make their way through the early days of middle school. The film was significantly inspired by the work of NYU professor (and frequent Browning collaborator) Niobe Way, whose book Deep Secrets investigates the fragility and regrettable dissolution of once-intimate friendships among adolescent and teenage boys. This connection piqued my curiosity, of course, as did the central narrative of the film itself, because I wasn’t sure if I’d ever seen a picture so intent on spotlighting a certain kind of friendship between boys.
A number of my favorite movies—Stand By Me, Boyz in the Hood, Dazed and Confused—offer depictions of deep, important connections between boys at various stages of coming of age, and I think they’re entertaining, instructive, and smart. But whereas these films tend to explore youthful exuberance, lost innocence, relational hierarchies, and social alienation by focusing more prominently on group dynamics and activities, Close seems unique in its insistence on framing extended one-on-one interactions between adolescent boys that are open, vulnerable, and—in the truest emotional sense of the word—loving. It also takes an unblinking look at what can happen when those kinds of relationships are subject to a societal gaze that doesn’t know what to make of an intimate, non-sexual friendship between boys.
“‘Close’ seems unique in its insistence on framing extended one-on-one interactions between adolescent boys that are open, vulnerable, and—in the truest emotional sense of the word—loving.”
I found Close powerful, and I found it heartrending. It is a film full of difficult moments, and perhaps no scene saddened me more than when Rémi attempts to reprise the boys’ fantasy play of swordsmen on the run from marauding soldiers, only to see Léo quietly but clearly demur. Driven by palpable social messages about how his gender should mature, Léo is shrinking from their previous connection and trying to express “boyhood” in what he sees as a more normative fashion. The confusion and emerging hurt on Rémi’s face suggest that he knows something is being lost, but cannot understand why. While there are scenes in the film which may pack more of an immediate emotional wallop, this scene stayed with me, because it seems like something so many of our boys will eventually have to confront—a moment when things no longer make sense, when the old social and relational rules don’t seem to apply.
I don’t know that our school can stop such hurts from coming, but I do believe that we are called upon to try, which is why our social-emotional learning and advising programs emphasize the importance of deep listening, interpersonal compassion, and emotional honesty and courage as part of healthy life, both personally and in community. The model of friendship that our world offers to boys in childhood redounds well into their adulthood—and, research is presently indicating, often not for the better. A recent study demonstrated that women are twice as likely to receive emotional support from a friend as are men, and that men are half as likely as women to tell a friend that they love them. And while a CDC report has shown that today’s girls are enduring shocking and unsettling levels of sadness themselves, the Survey Center on American Life reminds that number of people across gender who report having no close friends has quadrupled over the past thirty years, and notes that young men are 12% more likely than young women to seek out help from a parent rather than a friend. Too many men are lonely, frustrated, and dissociated, and this condition is unhelpful to them, to their significant others, and to the worlds they inhabit.
The point, as ever, is not that Browning wants to promote a singular type of friendship, or one narrow definition of masculinity, for its boys. Healthy boyhood and manhood is capacious enough to accommodate any number of interlocking and mutually reinforcing virtues and expressions—physical prowess and emotional vulnerability, resilience and compassion, a sense of independence and an appreciation for connection, a belief in bravery and an understanding of restraint. To draw upon our most fundamental insight: There’s more than one way to be a man. That recognition confers upon us a responsibility—an opportunity—to give boys practice not only in “shoulder-to-shoulder” connections in sports and music and other group activities, but also to other ways of being that are too often defamed as being unacceptable for boys of a certain age. We can work to normalize the notion that emotional attachment, honesty, and openness in one-on-one encounters are not outside of rewarding friendships between adolescent and teenage boys, but rather essential to those same friendships. This, to me, is the helpful, moving reminder that a film like Close offers.