Sundance Review: ‘Try Harder!’ Exceeds Expectation
“You get used to feeling mediocre”
At Lowell High School, being an overachiever is simply average. Considered the most competitive public school in San Francisco and known for its predominantly Asian- American student body, most who attend see it as the first step toward admittance to a top ranked college. Guided by the experiences of a handful of students, director Debbie Lum’s documentary Try Harder! tours all the highs and lows of their senior year.
Lum’s decision in selecting a half dozen subjects allows their personalities to feel distinguished and memorable. The kids are authentically goofy, fearless, laid back, or ambitious, providing a solid variety of perspectives and mentalities. This sense of individuality is vital when they are fit into a world of rigorous academia and standardization. The documentary follows the college admissions process with firm dedication— from the beginning of senior year, to application deadlines, to the agonizing waiting for decisions, and finally the final outcome of acceptance or rejection.
At any other high school these students would likely compete for valediction or class president, yet at Lowell they see themselves reduced to mediocrity. As colleges become more selective and admission percentages narrow each year, the bar is raised for these kids along with the stakes. Lowell does focus on instruction about managing one’s expectations however. The school invites speakers explicitly to redirect the kids into setting more realistic goals for themselves. During their freshman year, a student observed that their peers favored wearing Stanford sweatshirts. Now, only a couple years at Lowell later, those garments are nowhere to be found. Try Harder! watches as the near impossibility of actually getting into a top ranking or ivy league school clarifies in each student’s mind, and the anxiety of potential failure takes root. But how can each student truly give up on their educational lottery ticket when there is still a little voice inside them that whispers, “but what if I could be the one to make it?”
Try Harder! applies this evenhanded perspective to even larger, more difficult topics of the systemic challenges facing the students. The seniors at Lowell are acutely aware of the racial bias at play in their ambitions for higher education. Alvan, Ian and Sophia all know how universities diminish Asian students like them to grade-obsessed machines, and that deeply flawed admissions quotas factoring in identity will have as much sway as their AP scores. Another student, Rachael, talks through the reductive dilemma of having to choose between checking either black or white on her applications, and the racist micro-aggressions she faces as a minority at Lowell. Even after the joy of an acceptance, there is the hard question of the immense and prohibitive cost of tuition for some. The documentary avoids being fully bogged down by these heavily serious issues at hand, and instead creates a discussion to demystify and further contextualize the process.
The classroom isn’t the only battlefield for the subjects of the film though as they contend with pressure from their parents on the home front as well. Alvan’s overbearing ‘Tiger Mom’ is contrasted with Ian’s mother, who is more supportive of her son’s desires to express himself creatively. A third student, Shea, grapples with the lack of any parental support. Often the kids aren’t the ones to set expectations, but their moms and dads aren’t outrightly vilified or applauded for their methods. Try Harder! is more interested in how parental relationships with their children develop or decline, and how each comes to terms with the eventual end results.
To anyone who went through it, every moment of the college application process is familiar. If you’ve been there, your heart will break for these mere 17-year-olds as they are expected to make hugely important life decisions. It’s unbearable to watch them so righteously believe that college will be the single most-defining aspect of their entire existence and as they strain themselves with every educational choice as though everything hangs in the balance. While the students excitedly strive for very noble goals like becoming brain surgeons, climate change experts or journalists; they falter when asked why they want to go to a school beyond just its name. Their concepts of self are so intrinsically tied to these vague notions of success that as the audience we cannot help but imagine the realizations and hard truths they will find after the film’s timeline ends. We wish we could tell them that there is more to life than GPAs and university rankings, but it’s something they have to learn on their own. Ultimately, we feel their devastation, anxiety, and the occasional elation as our own, turning the dehumanizing process of college applications into an identifiably human experience.
CINEMA AS WE KNOW IT’S SUNDANCE 2021 COVERAGE
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