We all love coming of age movies: films that celebrate the flow of adolescence towards the adult life. These movies are easy to identify not only by their storyline, but the very form of filmmaking employed in shooting them. Flashbacks? Check. Young protagonist as a narrator in the beginning of the film. Check. Young protagonist giving us a ‘moral of the story’ lesson at the end of the film. Check. The struggles of losing virginity subplot. Check (most of the times).
Not only are these movies immediately relatable, but they show us that it is okay to be human and flawed. Here’s a list of such movies that should definitely be on your must-watch list, especially if you’re feeling the burden and monotony of every day life:
Moonlight
Moonlight is the best film of the year, period. To give any plot highlighters would be to do injustice to one of the best scripts of all-time. The film is subtle, beautiful and relates to the vulnerable side within each one of us.
The Age of Seventeen
This is one of the films that leave you spell bound. With pieces glued together by a pitch perfect performance by Woody Harrelson (whose never been more likable), the film is an ode to the conundrums life throws at us that we just aren’t ready for: the death of a parent and of-course, our sibling dating our best friend.
Spectacular Now
Spectacular Now isn’t a memorable film: but it sums up the jist of school life better than any other film we could think of. We all have a carefree Sutter inside of us, who shuts off the world and all it’s pain. And most of us have the girl/guy-next-door alter ego within us that defines Cassidy – which makes this romantic coming-of-age drama all that much more personal.
Pan’s Labyrinth
The film’s protagonist Ofelia does not come-of-age in the conventional sense as in other movies, but that doesn’t stop this from being the best film on the list.- Pan’s Labyrinth takes us to Post-Civil War Spain, where a young girl battles the realities of constant war, an ailing mother, evil step father with escapist imagination. The film is one of a kind – mixing dark fantasy and brute reality in a fashion that has never been accomplished with such effortless gusto in a major motion picture before. It does not, however, seem to far away from home – there’s a young Ofelia in all of us – which comes out whenever the geopolticial realities of the region (terrorism, Pak-India rivalry, socio-economic conundrums) often supersede and aggravate every day life.
