Lucy Walker neither criticizes, romanticizes nor patronizes her subject. She follows those who return to the church as well as those who do not. The film shows the commitment of the Amish to community, family, and God, but does not hide the male dominated aspect of the society nor the challenges of choosing technology based on "not technology itself, but how it will affect community and family life." They show Faron at his Amish home - for parts of the film he lives in a trailer with a friend, taking drugs - plugging his television into a battery.
A cohesiveness is built by following individuals from one area of Indiana. Faron is interviewed several times outside a trailer. A train passes during a couple of these interviews, which becomes motif of the film. At one point, it drowns him out. This seems to speak to the effort many teens make to be heard; to feel their voice is important.
Lucy Walker creates wonderful empathy for these kids by creating a clear protagonist, albeit a complex one, Faron, the drug taking and dealing teenager with a clear understanding that he is headed the wrong direction and a desire to get going in the right one. Velda, the film's secondary focus, was shunned by her family when she left the church after joining it, but describes the shunning as "their last way of showing that they love you."
The film states that 90% of the teenagers who embark on rumspringa join the Amish church. It is a tight knit community, and during the years of running about, it is not surprising that the teenagers eventually seek the comfort, security, and structure of their close knit community.
I teach at a Quaker school where all my students call me by my first name. A parent recently confided in me that she felt it "deprived the students of a rite of passage", the moment when they stop calling their elders Mr. and Mrs. and have that responsibility and privilege of living in the adult world. This film portrayed rumspringa as a rite of passage which every person involved understood the gravity of, regardless of whether they were someone who chose the church or to spend the rest of their lives in the "English" world outside the community.
