It’s not every day that you see your mother and grandmother in the main character of a movie, but when life imitates art in a movie, then that is the greatest compliment you can give the film. And that’s exactly what I can say about 20th Century Women. It’s a heartwarming story about growing up with the women that help raise us and led us into adulthood. While I won’t say that this film is perfect, I certainly have some problems with the film, it is still a good one and worth seeing. And that goes for both men and women. Men if you’re like me, seeing a movie that’s a love letter to the woman who raised you is a good thing.
20th Century women is about a young man coming of age with an assortment of characters living in his mother’s house and his uneven relationship with his mother. Set in 1979, the young man will deal with feminism, free love, teen pregnancy, and the tail end of the counterculture and drug era and all before the Reagan’s Money Obsessed Conservative America becomes a reality. There’s a great Reagan joke in the movie that helps sum up that theme. Annette Benning’s character enlists her son’s best friend played by Elle Fanning and the young woman renting a room played by Gretta Gerwig, to help raise him while giving him a different perspective of the world outside of his single mother’s view.
I was pleasantly surprised about how good this movie really was and more so that it wasn’t just women who could enjoy the film. Billy Cudup’s character as the main male influence down to eat and funny making him a likable character. However the best performances really did come from Annette Benning and Greta Gerwig who portrayed characters with opposing views of the world, but were both enduring and sympathetic. Elle Fanning’s character didn’t really offer much, but her performance wasn’t bad. Annette Benning really does steal the show in this movie likable, open minded mother figure that we wish we could all have.
I don’t think 20th Century Women is a perfect film. There are some problems with pacing, but it is a great film…a film that you will watch more than once and probably with your parents or at least your mother. The film is definitely worth seeing in the theater. It’s nostalgic, funny, heartwarming, and hits all the right notes. Probably the only people that won’t like this film are men who don’t like strong willed, independent women, but this film isn’t made for them anyway. It’s for those that love and respect the independent mother figures in our life as well as for the women who look up and want to be them. 20th Century Women is a must see on many levels.
