Thirteen. Unlucky indeed.

Thirteen. 2003. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke. Written by Catherine Hardwicke and Nikki Reed.

This movie is a story about teenage angst and self-destruction. It takes you into the lives of two teenage girls, Tracy Freeland (Evan Rachel Wood) and Evie Zamora (Nikki Reed), and shows you how tough growing up and fitting in can be. Tracy starts the movie as a honor roll student in middle school who just wants to fit in with the popular kids. Once Evie let's her get a taste of rebellious the cool kids live, Tracy never turns back. The movie follows Tracy and Evie on their path to self destruction through body mutilation, piercings, drugs, and other harmful means. Not only does Tracy shed her good girl shell through her new clothes, she begins to but heads with her mother and all the people who are trying to help her. 

As I stated in class, I like movies that I can feel myself being a part of.When I first saw this movie, I was only in sixth grade and 12 years old. This afforded me the privilege to "grow up" with Tracy and Evie. I was able to put myself in their shoes and contemplate on how I would have handled the situations that they were presented. When I re-watched the movie, I noticed that I have grown to appreciate the camera work. The fact that they did not just use a tripod or a traditional camera set up to shoot this movie made a huge difference. I like that it was shot as if any person from off the street was just video taping what was going on. It made the movie seem more real, their lives and story seemed more believable. It was as if this was a home movie of someone's thirteenth year. Although none of these events happened to me when I was 13, I was able to connect to the sincerity of the movie.

After watching the movie this go round, I googled it to find out some interesting facts. Apparently, the movie was loosely based on the life of it's co-star, Nikki Reed. In real life, she was Tracy's character who was just trying to fit in but ended up taking a wrong turn and spiraling towards disaster. Another fun fact I learned, was that this movie had some parts that were too racy for its underaged actors, Woods and Reed were both 14 during taping, that they had to keep paid social workers on site to make sure everything was appropriate.

If you wish to know more about this movie, visit the Wikipedia website and read the synopsis. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteen_(film)