20th Century Women (2016, R)

This movie only garnered one Oscar nomination, for Best Original Screenplay, and while Annette Bening is most often cited as the film’s notable snub, it’s a well-made film that would’ve been deserving in many categories.  Seeing it was a film experience that I can best describe as “intriguing,” and I’m still mulling it over.

Dorothea – career woman, mother, divorcee – is doing what she can to raise her 15-year-old son Jamie in California in 1979, but she’s at something of a loss.  She feels him slipping from her, and she can sense that he doesn’t know how to figure out who he should become.  Deciding to take the “it takes a village” adage more seriously, she enlists the help of Abbie, Dorothea’s punk-rock feminist boarder, and Julie, a 17-year-old neighbor and close friend of Jamie’s.  Dorothea reasons that, as Jamie’s mother, she can’t gain entry to the vital points of his young life and psyche where he most needs guidance, and she believes that between them, these three women can teach this boy how to be a man.

It’s a really interesting story, messy and imperfect but really compelling.  From a straight-up plot standpoint, it gets a bit bumpy for me at times – it can feel like it jumps too directly from one plot point to the next now and then, like it’s crossing off story beats on a checklist  - but overall, I thought it felt very different and expansive.  For me, even if it sometimes stumbles with the nuts-and-bolts aspect, it greatly succeeds at both the macro and micro levels.  The overarching themes are beautiful, and I love the device of inserting various characters’ backstories into the narrative using a mix of flashbacks and stock footage with another character’s voiceover filling in the details.  It nicely shows how much we’re all shaped by the times in which we live, and it’s a handy realization of the idea of everyone being their own walking story.  I also really enjoy these small, profound moments sprinkled throughout the film; the first one that stood out to me was when Abbie tries to take Julie’s picture as part of a “day in my life”-style photography project and Julie flatly replies, “I didn’t happen to you,” but there are many such little gems.

The actors all do really well playing characters who are people-in-progress trying to figure themselves out in uncertain times.  For me, the standout is probably Greta Gerwig’s Abbie – I’m not familiar with Gerwig, but she brings just the right mix of chaotic energy and slightly-numbed cynicism to the character.  Annette Bening does a fine job with Dorothea as she tries to turn her admission that she doesn’t know what she’s doing into a plan, and Elle Fanning plays Julie with a brittle fragility that’s wonderful to watch.  On the guys’ side, relative newcomer Lucas Jade Zumann does well with Jamie’s coming of age, and the always-reliable Billy Crudup plays William, another boarder of Dorothea’s, with understated gentleness and humor.

Warnings

Sexual content (including brief nudity,) language, drinking/smoking/drug references, and thematic elements.