Content warning: I do briefly discuss menstruation at one point in the review, so if you get easily grossed out, it's totally okay to skip this review. Also, it's a long post, so thank you for reading it.
A few years ago, on Halloween night, I was staying indoors instead of going out trick-or-treating. I didn't really feel like going out, and the way I tend to wind down after a long day is to watch a movie, so I decided to rent a film called 20th Century Women, a film directed by Mike Mills that stars Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, Elle Fanning and Billy Crudup. When I first watched the film a few years ago, I unfortunately didn't get past the first ten minutes because something else came up and I decided to do that instead of finishing the movie. I decided to pick it up again this time because I wanted to know what happened later in the film, and I'm glad I finished the movie because it was really good. I saw another film directed by Mike Mills last year called C'Mon C'Mon, a film starring Joaquin Phoenix as a man who involves his nephew in a film project he is doing. It was a really touching film, and it was really cool how it was shot in black and white even though it takes place in the modern day. Somehow, I am attracted to films that were directed in the 21st century that use black and white coloring during the film, such as Frances Ha, Roma, Mank and Belfast. There is just something aesthetically interesting about using black and white. Even though Frances Ha takes place in the modern day, when I saw that the film was black and white, it gave it this sort of mellowed down feel. I also love seeing Elle Fanning all grown up; I remember seeing her in this one movie called Phoebe in Wonderland several years ago, and she was so young, so it's really awesome to see how she and her sister, Dakota Fanning, have grown in their acting careers. I also loved Billy Crudup in Big Fish.
If you haven't seen 20th Century Women, it is a coming-of-age movie that takes place in Santa Barbara, California in 1979, and Dorothea is a divorced single mother in her 50s raising her 15-year-old son, Jamie, while also living with tenants Abbie Porter and Julie Hamlin. The film opens with Dorothea and Jamie shopping at a grocery store and then finding their old car, the one that Dorothea's ex-husband owned, up in flames. Abbie is a photographer recovering from cervical cancer and Julie is friends with Jamie. Abbie is in love with William, who works on the house that they live in, and they have a sexual encounter. Even though Jamie and Julie sleep in the same bed, Julie wants them to stay friends so that it doesn't ruin their friendship, but Jamie wants to be with her. Also, she is sleeping with other guys, so he doesn't have much of a chance with her. Dorothea is worried about her son, especially because he hangs around a lot of kids who are bad influences. He hangs out with a lot of kids who skateboard, and they invite him to Los Angeles to go to a party. He comes home drunk, and Dorothea becomes worried. She enlists Abbie and Julie to support him as he navigates adolescence, and Abbie has Jamie read a bunch of books on feminism and introduces him to the punk rock scene. Through his friendship with Abbie and Julie, Jamie learns a lot about himself and gets educated on a topic that most guys his age probably wouldn't bother exploring.
One key theme throughout the movie is feminism. Abbie has Jamie read several works by feminist authors and these works fascinate him, such as The Politics of Orgasm by Susan Lydon. However, the other guys he hangs around think he is less of a man for wanting to learn about feminism. While hanging out at the skateboarding park in one scene, a teenage guy is talking about his sexual encounter with a young woman and how he penetrated her, but then Jamie talks about female orgasms. The guy calls him a homophobic slur for being interested in learning more about the female body and beats him up. I didn't know this, but apparently the punk rock world was pretty divisive, so in the film there is a clash between bands like Black Flag and The Talking Heads. After Jamie gets beaten up, Dorothea goes out to find her car spray painted with "Art [homophobic slur]" and the other side with "Black Flag." (I don't listen to much punk rock, to be honest, but I guess the clash between punk rock groups was the 1970s version of modern-day feuds between hip-hop artists such as Drake and Kendrick Lamar.) In another scene, Jamie reads aloud a passage from a feminist book to Dorothea, and she turns around and asks him why he read it to her. Jamie is confused as to why she doesn't encourage him to read it, and he says he is interested in the topic, but Dorothea tells him that he doesn't need to explain feminism or the female body to her because she knows about it already. Dorothea confronts Abbie about teaching Jamie about feminism and tells her that learning about feminism is too much for Jamie and to stop teaching him about feminism. Later, when they are at the dinner table with friends, Dorothea finds Abbie sleeping at the table. He has Jamie wake her up, but Abbie says she is tired because she is menstruating. Dorothea is embarrassed and tells Abbie to not mention that at the table, but Abbie continues to explain that talking about periods shouldn't be taboo, and even has everyone at the table say the word "menstruation" so that it becomes less taboo. Dorothea tries to end the topic, but then Julie brings up that she had sex with a guy while on her period and goes into graphic detail about the encounter. Dorothea is upset and has everyone go home after seeing how uncomfortable everyone is talking about menstruation and sex.
Honestly, though, I appreciate Jamie for making the effort to educate himself on feminism and female sexuality. It reminds me of this sketch I watched from Key and Peele called "Menstruation Orientation," in which Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele are two men named Shaboots Michaels and T-Ray Tombstone speaking to an audience of men during a Ted Talk (it's called FAS- For All Species- as a parody of the TED Talks logo) about what to do when their female partners are on their periods. They emphasize to the men in the audience that even if they are uncomfortable with learning about menstruation and don't want to attend the lecture, they aren't the ones that have to deal with having a period every month, so they need to learn and get educated on what their wives and girlfriends have to go through. (Note: I am continuing to learn about and get educated on gender and sexuality, and I understand that the experience of menstruation is not limited to cisgendered women like me, but also encompasses people who are trans and nonbinary.)
When I first saw it, I busted up laughing but as I thought more about it, I really appreciated that Key and Peele did this sketch because growing up, I didn't know many guys who were comfortable talking about menstruation or willing to educate themselves about it. During health class it was a topic that elicited giggles and inappropriate comments from 8th grade boys (to be fair, I did giggle when my health teacher started talking about the reproductive system, so I was part of that group of immature kids who laughed.) Menstruation always felt like this thing I felt embarrassed about or that I could only talk about with other women, but watching this sketch gave me hope that if I was with a guy I didn't have to feel embarrassed about mentioning whenever I was on my period or had mood swings. Even still, I sometimes feel embarrassed to talk about my menstrual cycle around people and even feel awkward when getting sanitary pads from the pharmacy and self-conscious while wearing them. But watching how Abbie in 20th Century Women felt openly comfortable talking about her period around men and women, especially during the 1970s, was, well, I don't have the right word to describe it, but "empowering" sounds about right. I do appreciate how we are working to take the stigma out of talking about menstruation more often. There is a sweet commercial that Hello Flo where a girl called The Camp Gyno goes around giving her fellow campers tampons and giving them "menstruation demonstrations" with a Dora the Explorer doll (spoiler: her program fails miserably because all the girls are getting Hello Flo period starter kits in the mail, so they don't need her to be Camp Gyno anymore.)
Somehow this movie reminded me of other movies I have seen. Julie and Jamie's friendship reminded me of When Harry Met Sally, because there is one scene in the movie where Harry tells Sally she is attractive even though he is dating her friend, Amanda, and Sally is offended. Harry thinks it's ridiculous that he can't tell her she is attractive without it sounding like he is coming onto her, and when she firmly tells him that they are just going to be friends, he tells her that they could never become friends as a straight male and a straight woman because "the sex part always gets in the way." Harry argues that a man can't be friends with a woman he is attracted to because he will always want to have sex with her. Even though Sally remains firm about remaining friends, Harry continues to find her attractive. Even though Julie wants to remain friends with Jamie, he has romantic and sexual feelings for her. Jamie educates himself on female orgasm because he wants to know how to pleasure a woman, but Dorothea is uncomfortable that Jamie is learning so much about the female body at a young age. It's interesting how their relationship has unfolded over the years, because when he was younger, Dorothea advocated for him to have his own bank account, and even let him skip school when he didn't feel like going (she even was impressed that he forged her signature when signing absence permission slips.) However, as he gets older, they struggle to have a good relationship together because he is becoming a teenager and is becoming more distant from him. Dorothea loves keeping track of stocks, and has Jamie calculate the stocks with her, but he isn't interested in doing that anymore. Even though Dorothea asked Abbie and Julie to help her have a deeper relationship with Jamie, Dorothea still wanted to keep Jamie sheltered from a culture of drugs, parties and punk rock.
Also, it's wild to say this, but it boggled my mind while watching 20th Century Women that there was a time period when people lived without smartphones. They had to entertain themselves and be bored, they couldn't just watch YouTube or TikTok. There is a scene where Jamie has Julie take a pregnancy test, and they have to wait two hours for the results, so they go outside and learn how to smoke. They didn't have cell phones at the time, so they had to be bored and find creative ways to have fun. Julie tries to teach Jamie how to smoke like a cool guy, and not look unsure of himself while he does it. But then Jamie decides to stop because he learned that smoking wouldn't be good for his health. I can only speak for myself, but whenever I feel bored now or stressed or anxious, I want to distract myself from those uncomfortable emotions that are coming up. I distract myself nowadays by going on my phone and scrolling through YouTube. Even though deep down I know my brain is overloaded by all the data and information it is taking in as I spend time scrolling on my smartphone, I still do it because my brain gets a temporary rush of dopamine every time that I check my phone. However, that's why I have to keep checking my phone so I can have those repeated rushes of this pleasure chemical, dopamine. But before I know it, I have passed time and haven't done much other than scrolled through YouTube videos on my video feed. I scroll through my phone to avoid being bored, but I end up not feeling great after my phone use. When I finally got bored of YouTube, I decided to pick up a book and read. After I dove into a few pages of the book, I remembered how much fun reading was. While my phone is helpful in many ways, I have also noticed that I tend to be on it a lot, and that I could benefit from cutting back on the time I spend on it. Jamie and Julie would probably live a very different life if they had smartphones in 1979.
Annette Bening is amazing (she is the actress who plays Dorothea, Jamie's mother). She was in a movie I saw several years ago called The Kids Are All Right, which stars her and Julianne Moore as a lesbian couple who meet the man who was their sperm donor when they conceived their two kids. She was also in a really good movie called Nyad, which is a true story about a swimmer named Diana Nyad who came out of retirement and swam from Florida to Cuba in her 60s. That movie was truly about never giving up, because she had to overcome serious obstacles: panic attacks, killer jellyfish, and saltwater. Not to mention she had to start over several times. But she never gave up, even when her team told her that she could potentially die if she continued chasing this risky dream. It was a great film, and Annette Bening and Jodie Foster made a really good on-screen duo. I also love seeing Greta Gerwig with red hair; for some reason, her character, Abbie, looked like someone I knew in college. Also, I love Greta Gerwig's other films, which she directed: Lady Bird, Little Women and Barbie. Each of these films spoke to me personally in some way, and the stories for each of them were really touching. In 20th Century Women, I really love how it spans from past, present and future. We get to know each character's backstory and how their lives unfolded in the future. In all, I'm glad I finally got around to watching the entire movie because it ended up being a really touching and powerful movie.
20th Century Women. Directed by Mike Mills. 2016. Rated R for sexual material, language, some nudity and brief drug use. 118 minutes.
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