{"id":176722,"date":"2018-10-28T00:01:11","date_gmt":"2018-10-28T07:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shockya.com\/news\/?p=176722"},"modified":"2018-10-31T14:23:48","modified_gmt":"2018-10-31T21:23:48","slug":"176722","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shockya.com\/news\/2018\/10\/28\/176722\/","title":{"rendered":"Boy Erased Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Boy<\/a><\/p>\n

BOY ERASED
\nFocus Features
\nReviewed by: Harvey Karten
\nDirector: Joel Edgerton
\nScreenwriter: Joel Edgerton, based on Garrard Conley\u2019s memoir
\nCast: Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, Joel Edgerton, Xavier Dolan, Troye Sivan, Cherry Jones
\nScreened at: Park Ave., NYC, 10\/2\/18
\nOpens: November 2, 2018<\/strong><\/p>\n

When you live in New York, the most progressive large city in America, you may not realize what\u2019s going on in broad swaths of our country. Look at a map and you\u2019ll find that blue states are largely in coastal areas while broad reaches of the South and Mid-West are red. And since New Yorkers live in a state where parents have been noted to demonstrate with signs saying \u201cI am proud of my gay son,\u201d we are unaware that millions of parents of gay children are either in denial or coerce their gay kids into pursuing change. These guardians, perhaps because they want to be grandparents or they believe erroneously that they are guilty of \u201cmaking\u201d their children homosexual, may opt to enroll their young \u2018uns in gay conversion therapy. Never mind that this technique has been proven worthless and that few if any graduates change their sexual orientation. <\/p>\n

Thanks to the writings of Garrard Conley, whose memoir \u201cBoy Erased: A Memoir\u201d recounts his weeks in an Arkansas center claiming to reverse the sexual orientation of their charges, we now have a movie adapting his book. \u201cBoy Erased\u201d could be called a biopic, though the names of the characters have been changed. Though Joel Edgerton, the director who plays a major role of a counselor, is known principally as an actor. \u201cBoy Erased\u201d is his sophomore entry in filmmaking.<\/p>\n

You might expect a writer or director to come out forcefully and with brutal satirical edges in describing what goes on in gay conversion centers, but Edgerton\u2019s character are appropriately nuanced. The head counselor at an Arkansas center, Victor Sykes (Joel Edgerton), is not the sort of person you might want to have a beer with since he does carry on with a project that endorses some sadism. Though he seems to have no professional qualifications for the job, he treats the mostly young class of gays with tough love, breaking into some brutal treatment about midway into the story.<\/p>\n