Teenage (15.)
Directed by Matt Wolf.
Featuring Jena Malone, Ben Whishaw, Julia Hummer, Jesse Usher and Alden Ehrenreich. 78 mins
Director Wolf has gone to a lot of effort to make a film that looks like very little effort has gone into it – other than an extensive trawl through the archives. Based on a book by Jon Savage, its subject is the creation of the teenager. The narrative takes us from the Industrial Revolution, when children were used in the factories as virtual slave labour, up to the Second World War. It concentrates on The States, Britain and Germany and is told through the words of selected figures from each country such as a girl who joined the Hitler Youth or a daughter of privilege quickly going off the rails.
The phrase being pushed by the filmmakers to describe it is Living Collage, which is a fancy term for the kind of mix of black and white archive footage accompanied by voices of the period that you may see filling a half hour on BBC 4. The difference is that some of the footage here has been very artfully created by the director; if you didn’t know you probably wouldn’t see the join. The subject is not without interest but the film’s tone seems a little too precious about it and its style seems too flip to lend it any substance. It is true to its title, being rather full of its own importance while actually having very little to say.
I
Directed by Matt Wolf.
Featuring Jena Malone, Ben Whishaw, Julia Hummer, Jesse Usher and Alden Ehrenreich. 78 mins
Director Wolf has gone to a lot of effort to make a film that looks like very little effort has gone into it – other than an extensive trawl through the archives. Based on a book by Jon Savage, its subject is the creation of the teenager. The narrative takes us from the Industrial Revolution, when children were used in the factories as virtual slave labour, up to the Second World War. It concentrates on The States, Britain and Germany and is told through the words of selected figures from each country such as a girl who joined the Hitler Youth or a daughter of privilege quickly going off the rails.
The phrase being pushed by the filmmakers to describe it is Living Collage, which is a fancy term for the kind of mix of black and white archive footage accompanied by voices of the period that you may see filling a half hour on BBC 4. The difference is that some of the footage here has been very artfully created by the director; if you didn’t know you probably wouldn’t see the join. The subject is not without interest but the film’s tone seems a little too precious about it and its style seems too flip to lend it any substance. It is true to its title, being rather full of its own importance while actually having very little to say.
I
