Try Harder!

“While Try Harder! hints at the correlation between anti-Blackness and the model minority myth, it never quite threads anything together.”

Title: Try Harder! (2021)
Director: Debbie Lum 👩🏻🇺🇸
Producers: Debbie Lum 👩🏻🇺🇸, Nico Opper 👩🏼👨🏼🇺🇸🌈, and Lou Nakasako 👨🏻🇺🇸

Reviewed by Mimi 👩🏻🇺🇸

Technical: 3/5

Growing up in the Bay Area, I remember hearing about San Francisco’s Lowell High School, characterized as an “Asian excellency school”—a nationally ranked public school not unlike the one I attended. The setting of Try Harder!, which premiered yesterday at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, is especially notable for its majority Asian American student body. The ever-growing Asian immigrant population in California certainly plays a role in shaping the demographics, but it’s the reputation for churning out competitive college applicants that attracts so many parents desperate to send their kids to an elite yet cost-free program.

Best known for her debut feature Seeking Asian Female (2012) about white men who marry Asian women, director Debbie Lum follows a group of high school seniors (and one junior) as they navigate the college admissions process over the course of a year in Try Harder! All too aware of the academic pressure they’re under, Asian American students Alvan, Ian, and Sophia embody what’s considered “normal” at Lowell. Rachael and Shea, who are Black and white respectively, offer outsider perspectives. But regardless of race, what the students have in common is their desire to get accepted into a top-tier university. Nearly all of them apply to the Ivy League, Stanford University, and highly selective University of California campuses, including UC Berkeley and UCLA.

Interviews with parents provide some context: Alvan’s mother, an immigrant from Taiwan, comes from a culture reliant on test-taking. Meanwhile, Ian’s mother, whose family has lived in San Francisco for generations, describes herself as the “opposite of a Tiger mom.” A Lowell graduate herself, she initially rejected the idea of sending her son to her alma mater, hoping to avoid the obsession over AP classes in favor of a more well-rounded high school experience. A college-advising counselor convinces her otherwise. Finally, Rachael’s Black and single mother believes her daughter is smart and wants her to aim high. As different as they are, many of the parents are also trying their hardest.

What remains unclear is why the students want to attend these colleges, other than it’s what is expected of them. I wished Try Harder! gave us more of a window into the internal lives of its teen protagonists. Their own uncertainty when matched with parents’ insistence on deciding for them leads to tension, but Lum refrains from pushing too hard on her subjects. The film maintains a fly-on-the-wall approach. Nor does the commentary stray beyond Lowell’s bubble when it comes to questioning the potential flaws of this education system. Matters such as socioeconomic privilege are alluded to but never confronted.

Perhaps it would have been too much to tackle in under 90 minutes. After all, I can only imagine the fine line the filmmakers must have had to tread in order to gain access to these students—and secure the trust of their helicopter parents—in the first place.

Gender: 4.5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES

We see young women represented on screen through Rachael and Sophia, while offscreen both men and women fill crucial roles from cinematography to editing. The film treats both its male and female subjects as equal contenders in the college admissions game. Curiously, we don’t witness any substantive friendships between students. Instead, Lum seems primarily invested in the dynamic between parent and child. A range of parenting styles emerge, from overbearing to noticeably absent—the impact of which are apparent in how the students cope. The relationship between Rachael and her mother feels particularly well developed and serves as an emotional anchor among the different storylines.

Race: 5/5

Rachael wrestles with her biracial identity (her mother is Black, her father is white), specifically when it comes to which box to check on her college applications. Ugly assumptions about affirmative action, and the false notion that it leads to preferential treatment for African Americans, underlie her concerns. In another moment, she recounts her disappointment after receiving a low score on a test, only to have a classmate say to her, “I didn’t expect for Black people to actually care about their grades.” Her experiences reveal the pervasiveness of anti-Blackness, even in a predominantly non-white institution. Earlier this month, administrators discovered racist slurs posted anonymously in a school-sponsored forum on racial inequity, demonstrating the need to "address the ongoing racist history and culture at Lowell."

While the film hints at the correlation between anti-Blackness and the model minority myth that burdens the Asian American students, Lum never quite threads anything together. In a system that unfortunately pits them against each other, the Asian American students believe themselves to be disadvantaged in other ways, internalizing that admissions officers tend to view them as proficient test-takers and nothing more. The statistical fact that a school like Stanford rarely accepts Lowell students supports their belief. But all this ignores the reality that white students are the greatest beneficiaries of affirmative action.

Despite spotlighting a “diverse” cast, the film stays narrowly focused on high-achieving Asian American students who excel in STEM. I kept wondering about the ones who don’t fit that mold. What is it like for them? Alvan’s moving friendship with his science teacher gives some much-needed dimension to his narrative. But the film’s light touch appears hesitant to probe deeper into Ian or Sophia’s psyches. The editing repeatedly uses sound bites from the Asian American students like a Greek chorus in order to transition from scene to scene. This technique has the unfortunate effect of emphasizing their collective interchangeability—the very thing the students themselves are fighting against.

Bonus for Disability: +0.00

Missing from the film is any mention of mental health. It’s possible that Lum’s intention was to guard the privacy of minors. Still, it seems odd and even worrying that amid all the chatter about academic pressure, sleep deprivation, and feelings of inadequacy expressed by multiple students in such a high-stress environment, no guidance counselor or educator addresses how the school manages anxiety, depression, or other issues related to their well-being.

Seeking mental health services is often stigmatized in Asian American communities, and the consequences are real. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ findings in 2017, “Suicide was the leading cause of death for Asian Americans, ages 15 to 24,” while “Asian American females, in grades 9-12, were 20 percent more likely to attempt suicide as compared to non-Hispanic white female students.” Given the seriousness, it feels like a glaring omission.

Mediaversity Grade: B+ 4.17/5

Try Harder! pulls back the curtain on a world that has been seldom explored in popular culture. Lum does an admirable job of introducing viewers to this complex microcosm while refraining from passing judgment on her subjects, and I was glad to see the experiences of these students documented. At times, however, the lack of editorializing hinders the film’s ability to land on a more substantive or compelling takeaway. For those of us who lived it, and survived, it may be all too familiar.

Like Try Harder!? Try these other titles that examine the pressures of high school.

*Interview w/ Alain Uy on Better Luck Tomorrow (2002), Technicolor Theatre Podcast*

Grade: BLiJanuary 31, 2021Female/Nonbinary Creator