Film Review: Boys State

Originally published August 22, 2020

There are no immediate stakes at the heart of programs such as the American Legion’s Boys State. The gathering of 1,000 high school students to play-act a state’s government is just that: play-acting. Many participants are fighting for the governor’s position, a position the winner will hold for 18 hours. Still, Directors Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine make a mock-up of the Texas state government seem as important as the real thing in their new documentary Boys State.

Moss and McBaine focus on five young men from varied backgrounds who have lofty ambitions inside and outside this week-long bubble. Rene and Ben are the party chairs for the Nationalist and Federalist parties; Steven, Robert, and Eddy are gubernatorial candidates.

For the Nationalists, Steven is the son of an undocumented immigrant and one of the few Latinos in the mostly white population. Rene, a Black Chicago native, openly admits he has never seen as many white people as he has at the conference. The lanky, charismatic Robert would have been the sole protagonist of a lesser documentary but finds space for genuinely revealing commentary.

On the Federalist side, Ben is a double amputee with a strong sense of individualism and a desire to work for the CIA. The student journalists covering the events fawn over Eddy’s oratory prowess and he is compared favorably to Ben Shapiro. He dominates the Federalist gubernatorial primary and faces Steven in the general election.

The program has all the hallmarks of a real political campaign. Potential candidates beat hoof to gather signatures and use mass media to boost their campaigns. A whole media apparatus springs up around the conference; candidates appear on television shows and podcasts and social media accounts are created out of whole cloth, sometimes with nefarious ends.

Those hallmarks extend to the real-world politicking. Ben states he doesn’t see race, gender or disability, but a Nationalist faction attempts to impeach Rene through racist rhetoric. Later, the Federalists attempt to sink Steven’s campaign by attacking his involvement in the March for Our Lives movement and Rene’s attempt to rules-lawyer Eddy out of debate time.

All five boys are dynamic speakers; Moss and McBaine reward that dynamism by showing off their knack for combining the fly-on-the-wall techniques of Direct Cinema with a much more operatic feeling. The camera continually pans around the boys as they speak. They are just as much the center of the camera’s attention as they are the audience’s attention. The rousing speeches spark just a tiny bit of hope in the viewer.

The one-on-one interviews with each significant character provide a stark contrast. Each interview is strikingly honest; each participant details their thought process and how far they are willing to go to “win.” Sometimes the boys are so Machiavellian that it’s a relief when Napoleon is tapped as a role model; one of the interviewees forsakes his true beliefs to win.

He loses to an opponent who speaks from the heart.

Boys State is a film about kids being taught how elections and governance work. The question becomes which lessons they’re learning.

Final score: 9.3/10