Youth in Revolt : January - February Theme
“It’s just the age… the age where nothing fits”
Every generation has experienced the growing pains of youth, but when people age out of their younger years, they seemingly forget those hardships. Parents, teachers, seniors, and the like remind us "they were kids once" before spouting “You’re too young.” “Don’t do this.” “Don’t do that” “Shape up.” “Respect your elders.” It’s already difficult enough trying to figure out who you are and what you’ll become, but it’s exacerbated when you heap on expectations from a society that silences younger generations for being different. It’s infuriating, and enough to cause anyone to lash out. That friction, one between the youths and the olds, drives our new theme: Youth in Revolt.
Over the next nine weeks, we’re selecting films that depict younger generation rejecting conformity and igniting rambunctious rebellions at the hands of being misunderstood. They emphasize the classic coming-of-age tale, but sprinkle heavy doses of generational strife atop the realization of one’s self. Acting on your own accord, disobeying authority, and maybe busting a hardy cry or two at the alienation felt inside, these films aren’t afraid to reject the authoritative hypocrisy felt by younger generations, because sometimes being seen means being who you are. Acting out never felt so right when you’re a Youth in Revolt.
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Rebel Without A Cause
(Nicholas Ray, 1955)
“YOU’RE TEARING ME APART!”
Blue jeans. White t-shirt. Red bomber jacket. James Dean.Nothing else needs to be said for the image of suave misfit Jim Stark from Rebel Without A Cause to begin cultivating in your head. It’s an All-American image, one emblazoned in Hollywood iconography, with plenty of associations, but perhaps no one is as affecting as that of youthful rebellion. Nicholas Ray’s 1955 dramatic classic sees Dean encapsulating what it means to be a confused teen with anger you don’t know what to do with, and over the course of an hour and fifty minutes, we see just where that anger leads him.
Like many troubled youths, Jim’s plight starts at home. Parents fighting between themselves, moving from location to location, outlaying enough money to solve any temporary problems. But as we are all too familiar with, the real problems are boiling right beneath the surface. Violent outbursts, reactionary statements, and unbecoming behavior take hold of Jim as he struggles to acclimate to the new environment around him. It’s not until he makes friends with Judy and Plato, two other rebels without causes, that he finds solace in their communal suffering. It’s a perfect dramatization of teen angst, and more critically, an acute depiction of privilege failing to build the fundamental pillars of a satisfying life. Universal in message and stored in the halls of Hollywood legend, Rebel Without A Cause captures the rage and anger felt by younger generations at a time when those senior think they knows best.
-Greg Arietta
Persepolis
(Marjane Satrapi & Winshluss, 2007)
“Don't react to their cruelty. There's nothing worse than bitterness and revenge. Keep your dignity and be true to yourself.”
When you’re young you don’t have the power to choose when things happen. School schedules are regimented for you, as well as extracurricular groups and teams. Your personal schedule is usurped by parental whims. Your life is planned years and years ahead of time in one way or another. On top of every external thing, you also have little control over when you come of age. At times, growing up is likened to a war within one’s self. Marjane Satrapi also had one outside of her. For PERSEPOLIS’s Marjane, coming of age in Iran coincided with the 1979 revolution. Her parental curfew became a governmental one. All women were forced to wear headscarves and conservative clothing. The borders were closed. In the cinematic retelling of her childhood, Satrapi’s PERSEPOLIS rebels with broken curfews, denim jackets and Jichael Mackson records. It spans the formative time when the most pivotal time in a country coincides with the most pivotal time in someone growing up. But PERSEPOLIS also asks us to consider what it means to remember where you came from and always stay true to yourself, if both of those entities are at odds with one another.
-Kevin Conner
Moonrise Kingdom
(Wes Anderson, 2012)
“We’re in love. We just want to be together. What’s wrong with that?”
Off the coast of New England, on the island of New Penzance, in the Mile 3.25 Tidal Inlet deemed the Moonrise Kingdom, the young love of Suzy Bishop and Sam Shakusky cemented as one of cinema’s most endearing romances. Drawing parallels to Terrence Malick’s Badlands, Wes Anderson’s 2012 film of lovers on-the-run sees Suzy and Sam fleeing their present lives to be together, the former a child of a dissatisfying home life under two maritally distraught lawyers and the latter a byproduct of the foster system. Together they share their troubles, each with their own emotional baggage that makes them perfectly complimenting outlaws pursued by the island’s lone ‘sad dumb policeman,’ its adults, and Troop 55 of the New Penzance Khaki Scouts.
As the pursuit persists, Suzy’s and Sam’s love only grows, their runaway survival and beach dancing antics harmonizing in righteous defiance for the perennial forces that seek to separate them. Misunderstood by those who govern them, their act of love is seen as rebellion, one that must be stamped out by litigating parents and a trip to electro-shock therapy. But this youthful love is not fleeting, and it is specifically what the island’s adults lack that makes it so horribly condemned. Featuring a deeply cathartic release of one of life’s most complex emotions, love, Moonrise Kingdom is an everlasting tale of star crossed lovers finding someone who understands their pain and arguably Anderson’s finest work to date.
-Greg Arietta
Zazie dans le Mètro
(Louis Malle, 1961)
“I grew up some.”
Louis Malle’s Zazie dans le Mètro is a fever dream of Nouvelle Vague delight. Full of surrealism and hilarity, it tells the story of a mischievous young girl sent to stay with her uncle in Paris. All Zazie wants to do is ride the metro, but when a strike scuppers her plans, she finds herself embroiled in unusual situations where she navigates the city on her own terms. Rebellious, foul-mouthed, and yet ever so charming, Zazie refuses to let others tell her what to do. Her phantasmagorical adventure is wildly funny, outlandish, and is a true gem in Malle’s oeuvre.
-Ivy Pottinger-Glass
The 400 Blows
(Francois Truffaut, 1959)
“I lie now and then, I suppose. Sometimes I'd tell them the truth and they still wouldn't believe me, so I prefer to lie.”
Francois Truffaut’s seminal 1959 debut film, The 400 Blows, is a staple of The French New Wave that every film student around the world has seen, but we would be remissed if we excluded it from a theme on dissident youth. From the onset where we see low angle views of the most emblematic French icon, The Eiffel Tower, we begin to feel the over bearing pressure of society. For lead Antoine Doniel, it’s felt everyday. At home, school, and around town, adults bombard him with traditional virtues in the hopes of molding him into an ideal French citizen, but as we are familiar, the ways of the old can’t define the new.
-Greg Arietta
Mustang
(Deniz Gamze Ergüven, 2015)
“Don’t you want to leave here?”
Restless as much as it is resilient, Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s MUSTANG is a rebellion without a middle ground. It does not shy away from the “you are either for us for against us” mentality. In the film, we find five sisters in a conservative Turkish family that are one by one married away against most their wishes after a local scandal calls into question the sister’s principals. Trapped in the home until their wedding day, Ergüven gives its penned up protagonists the gift of montage and editing. In flurries of cutaways and flashbacks we are shown fleeting glimpses of the sisters and their unshakable bond. These poetic sidebars are so striking that it makes their absence palpable when the film returns to the stark reality of their home and situation. MUSTANG is a film that riles you up, asks you where you stand in history, and is not looking for half measured responses. It knows it is not asking easy questions but do not be fooled into thinking its ensemble are as black and white as its themes. The layers that Ergüven imbues into this debut film are nothing short of dazzling.
-Kevin Conner
Daisies
(Věra Chytilová, 1966)
“If everything’s going bad, we’re going bad as well.”
The rules of society cannot hold Marie I and Marie II! Věra Chytilová’s feminist Czech New Wave film, Daisies, is a chaotic work of inventive filmmaking where the very form of the piece exudes rebellion. At first glance, the hard cuts, shifting color filters, and non-exist narrative are unwieldy, and indeed they are, but Daisies’ aesthetics exemplifies the fiery characteristics of our leads, female social liberation, and the discontent youth at the heart of the Czech New Wave.
The film depicts two young girls’ antics in 1960s Czechoslovakia. Romping around town, cat fishing older ill-willed men, and eating a plethora of food, Marie I and Marie II run through life as they see fit, without concern for social norms nor the decorum of a socially accepted ‘dignified woman.’ In a country brimming with dissatisfaction, Chytilová presents rebellious youth through a radically unorthodox film, embracing the frustrations felt by Czech citizens, and more importantly female Czech citizens. While there are plenty of films from this cinematic movement that would work for this theme, we feel Chytilova’s 1966 effort dares to break the rules in more ways than one, proving for these two girls that if everything’s gone bad, maybe they should be too.
-Greg Arietta
Lady Bird
(Greta Gerwig, 2017)
“Hey, Mom, did you feel emotional the first time that you drove in Sacramento? I did and I wanted to tell you, but we weren't really talking when it happened. All those bends I've known my whole life, and stores, and the whole thing. But I wanted to tell you I love you. Thank you, I'm... thank you.”
Stubborn isn’t strong enough a word for Lady Bird McPherson. She wants every part of her 18 year old life to be of her own decision, which anyone who has lived through that age knows is simply impossible. Where she goes to college, how she loses her virginity, and what she thinks of the authority figures in her environment are all decided in her defiant mind. Even her home town of Sacramento is at fault for her dissatisfaction, while she envisions herself amidst East Coast intellectuals and artists. As the lower class outlier at a private Catholic school, her most powerful tools are a smart mouth and untamable will. She is determined to do the opposite of what people ask of her, and what would be required for her to comfortably fit in.
The beauty of the film is how her bullheadedness can only by outmatched by her connection to her mother, Marion, and fight as they might, their relationship will never be broken. It’s Marion who ultimately lays out that neither she nor Lady Bird will probably ever have the kind of money to enjoy the freedoms she dreams of, and yet the two find comfort in dreaming together on tours of magnificent open houses. Greta Gerwig realizes the emotional payoff for rebellious youth comes from the gut punch of realizing everything you’ve taken for granted, and the regret following an argument with the person whose sacrificed everything to give you a good life.
-Megan Bernovich
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