Anthem of a Teenage Prophet. Directed by Robin Hays. Vancouver International Film Festival: First screening on Saturday, Oct. 6 at 6 p.m. at Vancouver Playhouse. For schedule visit viff.org.
A true teenage slacker works hard to deny that he is – or has ever been – in possession of any talent. Even if that talent is the eerie ability to predict the deaths of friends and loved ones.
Anthem of a Teenage Prophet is a Christian-themed high school melodrama that tells the story of Luke (Cameron Monaghan of Shameless), a long-haired skateboarder whose ambition to finish high school and smoke the odd joint is waylaid when he gains the gift of, well, prophecy.
For first-time feature director Robin Hays, it was a case of finding the right script at the right moment.
“I was going through a challenging time with loss,” she says.
She liked the characters but what resonated most was the script’s life-affirming message.
“I needed to hear that,” she recalls.
The movie is based on Joanne Proulx’s debut novel, Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet. Besides adding “teenage” to the movie title (a tradition that stretches back to 1957’s I Was a Teenage Werewolf) the movie also shifted the narrative from the book’s post-9/11 setting to the late 1990s.
Describing herself as a “’90s kid,” Hays was intent on making sure the teenagers looked like real teenagers. For anyone who remembers the sight of skinny kids flapping amid circus tent jeans, the movie’s fashion choices seem nicely understated.
Shot over 18 days in Kelowna, the movie opens with grainy VHS video of a very young Luke and his once inseparable pal, Fang. But we soon learn Luke has edged away from his former clique, leaving Fang and his spurned buddies staring at him like a mob boss glaring across the courtroom at his consigliere turned state witness.
Despite the latent tension, Luke, Fang, and the rest of the guys pack into a basement to play video games and smoke pot. And when every eyeball in the room is as glazed as the display window at Krispy Kreme, Luke mumbles the future. One of you will die tomorrow morning, he promises.
Inexplicably, his speech is caught by a camcorder.
The prediction comes true, triggering a sequence in which a TV news reporter – apparently with no compunctions about hounding a bereaved boy moments after the death of a close friend – stalks Luke like a komodo dragon before airing a news report that dubs him: “the prophet of death.”
Like Cassandra of Greek mythology or Christopher Walken in The Dead Zone, Luke wrestles with the utility of his second sight and becomes moody even by teenage boy standards.
Luke’s dullard dad, the type of guy who’s right too often in real life and too seldom in movies, wants his son to stop smoking pot and get a proper education. But Luke’s mother Mary, played by the sensational Juliette Lewis, knows she needs to comfort and cajole her son out of his stupor. Some of the movie’s best scenes come when we get to see Lewis and Monaghan together. Lewis plays Mary as unguarded and completely vulnerable while Monaghan’s Luke is completely guarded and far more vulnerable.
“Jesus,” Luke objects when she rouses him far too early.
“Nope, just your mom,” she replies.
But what really changes Luke’s life is his dead friend’s former girlfriend, Faith. (Jesus, Mary, prophet, Faith; you get the picture.)
Most of the movie is shot with a handheld camera that frequently bobs and weaves; a technique intended to make the audience feel they were on the journey with Luke, Hays explains.
Marbled with ‘90s rap music and a dash of coincidence (or heavenly intervention?) the movie is about self-loathing, penance, love, fate and friendship.
While the book’s tone is funnier (In the novel, Luke attributes his first vision to: “skank weed short circuiting my brain and channelling me into some psychic freak-show wavelength.”) the main characters are quickly recognizable and the hopeful message that first attracted Hays is still present.
It’s a message Hays hopes will inspire moviegoers.
“If people are going through a challenging time like I was when I first read the script . . . they can realize that this too shall pass.”
