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    Teenage

    Reviewed by
    pietroantoni@

    TEENAGE, a pretty eloquent doc from Germany and the U. S. A by director MATT WOLF was an astounding hit at TRBECA. Writers Jon Savage and Matt Wolf himself had a brilliant idea of relating how teenagers came into being, so to speak. There certainly was no such thing if we go back to the past, even the very far past as the time of the Industrial Revolution when even children did backbreaking work, but as should be noted, even back then, some rift was happening among the young. The writers state that the teenager was essentially invented/created. The twenties with its craziness, Swing Kids emerging in many parts of the world, Germany with its Nazi zealots all were contributing factors in this creation of an often rebellious life before adulthood. A culture was born that never existed previously. What is so wonderful about TEENAGE is that writers/director paint a living testimony of this wild period of life with an incredible treasure trove of archival film footage, an undeniably smart look at this earlier period with photos and a good deal of writing by teens themselves. Using Jena Malone and Ben Whishaw to outline matters including dramatic readings of those kids was certainly a very clever idea. It seems teenagers have always existed and they certainly did in chronological years, but they were never referred by that term. I might have missed exactly when the term came into our culture as a force to be reckoned with, BUT THINK OF IT! Before this documentary we never gave much thought to this term even if the roaring twenties gave us this burst of youth, yet they were flappers and hard drinking boys out for a grand ole time before everything collapsed in 1929. The 1930's had grave, grave problems and possibly the term teenager was rarely used except inside the Hollywood Studios. I HAVE MY OWN THEORIES WITH WHAT WENT DOWN STARTING WITH THE MID 20th CENTURY! These are MY VIEWS and not necessarily dealt with in TEENAGE! From the 50's on, not that the term teenager wasn't used in the 40's, a shocking cultural event occurred with ROCK, the desire for more independence from parents, from the restrictions of society and the very notion that 13 to 19 was a special, even privileged time of life which brought the good but many problems to boot, emerging like a sort of plague. There was the whole challenge of inner city turmoi for all especially for H. S. aged kids. Another problem, if it can be called that, was a humongous group of Americans who took to Suburbia which emerged in America with its own set of difficulties. One need only think of REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, BLACKBOARD JUNGLE and the like to see what happened to the teenagers of ANDY HARDY's world. This phenomenal occurrence did one more thing that Hollywood has still to let go of: THE COMING OF AGE STORY of teens, of so many thousands of teenagers brought to film in comedic ways, slapstick ways, so many other ways, but certainly not to the exclusion of the dramatic, often traumatic years of leaving childhood behind, experiencing every possible teen dilemma before passing on to adulthood with its own set of problems. I must give credit once more to writers/director for coming up with this concept which I suppose we have always taken for granted as something that was always with us. BRAVO!

    9
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    pietroantoni@  16.12.2014 age: 36-49 14,551 reviews

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