We the Animals and Honoring an Intimate Story of Brutal Love

Abstract

In this edited interview, psychologists Nisha Gupta and Eric Greene interview filmmaker Jeremiah Zagar about We the Animals (2018), his film adaptation of the novel by Justin Torres. We the Animals is a coming-of-age story of an adolescent boy named Jonah who grows up with rambunctious brothers in a working class mixed-race family in upstate New York, and who must contend with both his volatile father and his emerging queer sexuality. Jonah’s mother and father have a volatile relationship that makes and unmakes the family many times over, often leaving the boys fending for themselves. As his brothers harden and grow into versions of their father, Jonah, who is the youngest, becomes increasingly aware of his desperate need to escape. Driven to the edge, Jonah embraces an imagined world all of his own. In this conversation, Jeremiah describes what it was like to honor novelist Justin’s intimate story by bringing it to screen, depict the nuanced realities of love interlaced with violence within family dynamics, and craft an immersive story that poses more questions than it answers.