Movie Review: 20th Century Women
January 20, 2017 | By Tory Tran
I went into this movie mistakenly believing it was about pioneers. I have no idea where I got that idea, but I was wrong. Apparently, I had no idea which century was our 20th. Turns out, the events of this movie happened pretty recently. So recently, in fact, that I was alive for a substantial part of it.
As bummed out as I was to learn that Annette Benning was not bringing Oregon Trail to the big screen, it turns out her character was still pioneer of sorts; just one with a Volkswagen Beetle and a lot of feminist symbolism. Set in late ‘70s Santa Barbara, the themes and aesthetics should be very familiar to our local Summer Of Love generation.
Benning stars as a quirky single-mother and matriarch of a quasi-boarding house. The house serves as an island for her misfit tenants-cum-makeshift family; played by ingénue du jour Elle Fanning, indie-it-girl Greta Gerwig, and Billy Crudup as someone who I think was supposed to radiate a sort of bizarre sex appeal. Together they explore cancer, teen pregnancy, divorce, the birth of punk rock, several sexual awakenings, generic family turmoil, death, estrangement, atonement, wanderlust, regular lust, and Jimmy Carter’s failed reelection.
20th Century Women is a funhouse mirror inversion of one of Benning’s other famous films: American Beauty. If American Beauty was about perfect-looking people who lead morally bankrupt lives, then 20th Century Women is about raggedy people whose beautiful authentic souls chafe against the modern world.
The movie is a mile wide, inch deep. It covers too much ground to fully explore any one theme and the dialogue is bogged down by timeworn Hallmark-variety sentiment. At its best, the movie is has some wonderful moments of humor, especially in the first half. Unfortunately, most of that gives way to a strange pastiche of gimmicky clichés and nostalgic melodrama that feels neither new nor especially important.
20th Century Women is donating 5% of its revenues this weekend to Planned Parenthood. Support a small-scale theater - you can see 20th Century Women at the Alamo Theater Drafthouse, Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, Presidio Theater, United Artists Stonestown, and Embarcadero Center Cinema.