20th Century Women

Dir. Mike Mills

119 Minutes

USA

2016

Starring: Annette Benning, Greta Gerwig, Elle Fanning, Lucas Jade Zumann, Billy Crudup

*****/*****

Mike Mills' 20th Century Women is a beautiful and poetic ode to. . . almost everything one can possible think about. Youth, love, sex, a specific time period, family, friendship, history, the things that will almost surelybecome history, literature, film, feminism, punk music, the Talking Heads. It is both about everything while also being about not very much at all. It perfectly encapsulates the languorous mood of the summer heat as well as the burning lures of sexual awakening, and finds sympathy and understanding from nearly five different points of identification that all wonderfully weave together to form a striking portrait of the various figures and ideologies of the United States in the 70s. Oh, and it's all remarkably funny with a terrific ensemble all giving some of their best work. This is easily one of the best movies of the year, bar none.

The film shares a narration that bounces back and forth between Dorothea Fields (Annette Bening) and her teenage son, Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann). The place is Santa Barbara, California, and the year in 1979. A certain line of thinking is about to end and the world is about to drastically change, though, of course, none of these people know that yet. Dorothea runs a boarding house of sorts, with two rooms being occupied by Abbie (Greta Gerwig), a twenty something year old cancer survivor who dyed her hair red to emulate David Bowie and came to New York after discovering a love for photography, and William (Billy Crudup), a handyman who is working on restoring the house (a job that barely seems to be taking place whatsoever) but who clearly has eyes on Dorothea. Also stopping over often is Julie (Elle Fanning), a sexually promiscuous long-time friend of Jamie who sneaks in his bedroom window every night to sleep while Jamie does everything he can to be another notch on her belt. She is not so easily convinced.

Any form of traditional narrative here probably comes from Dorothea's sudden realization that her son needs to have proper guidance through these tumultuous years. She is divorced and so there is no father figure, an absence that Jamie clearly feels even if he never outwardly admits this, and she understands that Jamie is going to behave differently around her than around people he deems friends. And so she recruits Julie and Abbie to take him under their wings. Abbie provides Jamie with "Our Bodies, Ourselves" and other feminist texts, providing him with a fascination with the female orgasm ("You should be happy he wants to know about that," cries Abbie to a somewhat less than happy Dorothea), something that he hopes upon hope that he will be able to explore with Julie (and perhaps Abbie, for that matter, though Jamie's sexual angst is just another unfortunate staple of his age). He explores the New York City nightlife, hanging out in punk clubs that look like seedy dungeons and are quite literally holes in walls and gets beat up by a Black Flag fan for preferring the Talking Heads. 

While her son is finding out more about who he is (and the whirlwind of exposure to so many things only heightens his own confusion), Dorothea faces multiple crisis of her own. How can she offer her son support if he will not showcase his interests in front of her? But also, can she correctly understand the changing times around her that primarily cause the generational gap between mother and child? Dorothea claims that she is a free spirit. She bluntly offers her opinions on things ("You lie easily," she tells Julie), is fiercely hypocritical (she berates Julie for smoking despite the fact that she chain-smokes herself throughout the film (smoking wasn't a bad thing when she first discovered cigarettes)), and feels she can be open with her son on a variety of topics. But one can also see that she is struggling to comprehend the progress of culture, even though she feels she has a grip on it. And this is where Bening is really strong in the role, to the point where she even makes scenes of her listening interesting. She does this really amazing thing with her eyes, often squinting a bit when taking in pieces of information as if trying to go through it all in her mind in a quick way so as to be able to respond with ease. 

Mills is in his element here, a far cry from the forced quirk of his lackluster debut feature Thumbsucker over ten years ago, a film that struggles with finding a proper narrative and ends up being about nothing at all. 20th Century Women works as a lovely companion to his sophomore film Beginners (one of the best movies of its respective year as well), an autobiographical piece on his relationship with his father (which rightfully earned Christopher Plummer his first Oscar for playing a man who embraces his homosexuality shortly after being diagnosed with terminal cancer), and Mills finds strength in his ability to ignore narrative convention and explore the mood and rhythm of time period and its effect on memory. Beginners does have its main characters two tensions running through its veins, both the father-son relationship and a boy-girl love story, but 20th Century Women takes a step even further back, being even more about nothing in particular, and concentrates more on editing, music, and tone to convey a feeling rather than tell a story. Much of the script boils down to short vignettes that when strung together form the semblance of a plot, but work in the same way that the mind does in bouncing around from story to story, moment to moment. memory to memory. The camera is constantly moving either backwards or forwards, either leaving the character-in-focus to show the environments affect on them, or getting tighter and tighter to create a more striking intimacy. It also keeps the flow remarkably engaging. He pauses the narrative for inserts of items, photographs of his subjects, and small details of historical footage, all set to Roger Neill's atmospheric, dreamlike score. Some may find this frustrating, but at the same time these characters are so lovingly written and portrayed that to spend time with them is immensely pleasurable and shockingly immersive. 

And so much of the sadness at the heart of 20th Century Women comes from both its striking attention to detail over this period of time and the knowledge that something is coming to an end. American will be shifting soon. There will be a new president soon (with some convinced that Carter dug a grave for himself with his "Crisis of Confidence" speech-"I thought it was beautiful," Dorothea replies to a group of men who are not as willing to praise their President). The landscape of music and art is rapidly changing. The AIDS virus will bring an massive level of gravity to the decade in a similar action Altamont had on bringing the 60s to a close. And, inevitably, relationships will alter as people move forward in life. Dorothea and Jamie narrate this film with many short, declarative sentences, as if trying to drain every last drop of recall from the era that they possibly can. The last few minutes of this film are unexpectedly powerful, and really make one realize just how well-written and performed these characters are.

Bening is, as mentioned, terrific and this is on par or even better with her performance in American Beauty, but everyone else shines as well. Gerwig is particular does a masterful job with Abbie. Always a welcome figure in any movie that she is in, Gerwig initially seems to be cast for her charming and adorable "manic pixie dream girl" like appeal. She comes into the film with a self-proclaimed project where she takes a photo of everything that happens to her in a day (first introduced taking photos in a doctors office which getting a scan), but Mills is clearly more interested in what is bubbling underneath the positive exterior. Gerwig finds the balance between outward projection and internal fear, utilizing the expectations of her previous works to deliver a really amazing performance that creeps up to her conclusion that kind of feels like a brief and beautiful sucker punch. Fanning brings the nice mixture of adolescent confidence and youthful naiveté of a person who believes themselves to be much older than they are. Billy Crudup may be the weaker link in the cast, though mostly because of a lack of screen time, and so Lucas Jade Zumann delivers the more male star-turning work as Jamie. Zumann knows when to take the lead and when to step aside and let the influence around him take center stage, almost easier because he has such a strong script with which to work. 

If one thinks of 20th Century Women as a journey through the mind rather than a traditional beginning-middle-end piece of storytelling, they will be heavily rewarded in the rhythmic spell the movie casts on them. Mills has now crafted two marvelous works of memory, perfecting a style that may not particularly be commonplace but is unmistakably his own. 

October 24th, 2016