Genre:
Documentary, History
Distributor:
Soda Pictures
Rating: 12
Director:
Matt Wolf
Cast:
Jena Malone, Ben Whishaw, Alden Ehrenreich
Buy: Teenage [DVD] [2013]
[Amazon]Teenage is an endlessly fascinating and insightful documentary that dispels the myth that the teenager was a totally post war creation. It’s based on a book of the same name by Jon Savage, who also collaborated with the director Matt Wolf on the script. It’s a mixture of archive footage from the early 20th century up to WW2 and newly created footage; it creates a collage effect.
The film focuses on the Bright Young Things in 1920's London (a fantastic BBC documentary was made on them), Boy Scouts, Jitterbugs (teenagers into swing) and perhaps controversially The Hitler Youth. The film’s main narrative is told through diary entries of real teenagers read by Ben Whishaw and Jena Malone among others. It’s counterbalanced by the archive footage and the newly filmed footage, which is gorgeously created and at times hard to tell what is new and old.
It straddles between the fine line of documentary and visual essay, but never seems to have pretensions of a visual essay. It doesn't feature any interviews by historians but just the testimony from teenagers, so it’s somewhat one sided but that’s the point it seems- to get you into the mindset of the many pre-war youth movements.
It moves at a swift pace and is 78 minutes long, so it seems shorter than what it is. It’s a wonderful celebration of the birth of youth culture in the first half of the 20th century, in which it captures the restlessness of the teenager and their desire to change and subvert the norm. It also features a pretty great score by Deerhunter’s Brandon Cox, whose music I don’t normally like but it’s very fitting in this instance.
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