Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a devastating coming of age film filled with heart.
Based on the 1999 novel of the same name, The Perks of Being a Wallflower follows Charlie, a socially awkward 15 year old as he navigates his freshman year of high school. Charlie is sensitive and observant, content with watching the lives of the people he loves from the outside in. It’s not until he meets a group of seniors including the beautiful, charismatic Sam and her flamboyant brother Patrick that he learns to take an active role in his own life.
The story also follows Charlie’s fluctuating mental health issues while he slowly begins to unravel details about his childhood and his beloved Aunt Helen who died in a car accident on his seventh birthday.
This movie is everything to me. I first read the book and watched the movie during the spring break before my freshman year of high school. Despite the movie’s heavy themes, I remember feeling so comforted by the characters. Watching Charlie get swept up in the lives of such incredible people who loved him along with all the things that made him so profoundly sad made me feel like those people could also be out there for me.
I take away so much from this movie every time I watch it. I know you cannot love anybody’s pain away. I know that sometimes all you can do for the people you love is to make them believe they are worthy of the best kind of love and nothing less. I know you have to honor what you want in your relationships to make them genuine. I know all the love I hold in my chest is infinite and that not even time or space can stop it.
And I know that there’s always people who will love me and understand me and that I’m never alone.