Director: Matt Wolf.
Starring: Jena Malone, Ben Whishaw (voices).
Running Time: 78 minutes.
Certificate: 12A.
Synopsis: Matt Wolf’s prehistory of the teenager is a sharp, archive-rich take on youth from the early 20th century to its ‘official’ invention in the 1940s.
Like a bumper sized paddling pool, TEENAGE is fun and covers a lot of ground, but has no real depth. Matt Wolf has some grand ambitions with his latest documentary, striding from the early 20th century up to the birth of rock and roll via two world wars. He chronicles the history of, what would one day be referred to as, ‘The Teenager’. This is mediated through some pretty bored-sounding narration, including the usually excellent Ben Whishaw voicing ‘every boy ever in England’. These inner-monologues are supposed to sum up the zeitgeist of their respective genders in their particular countries in specific periods. This is a big ask and Wolf gives it a go, but how can you abbreviate such a complex notion as the collective consciousness of all young people?
His research is clearly thorough and there is a lot of insight. He really does try to get into the heads of these kids, be they the Bright Young Things of the 1920s, whose dazzling flame burned out pretty quickly, or the Hitler Youth. The most fascinating scenes are that of the German girl (voiced by Julia Hummer) who, due to disenchantment after the first World War, joins a fun new club for athletic boys and girls. This of course leads on to very bad things in the 1930s, but what makes it so interesting is hearing her justification for joining, which seems pretty reasonable. We imagine all groups associated with the Nazis to be fascist scum, so to hear them being talked about as people, with original footage of them frolicking about and playing the way children should, makes for rare and intriguing viewing.
These characters, though, are anthropomorphised blenders of communal thought, verbalising various ideas into easily digestible soundbites. Wolf uses actors in constructed scenes that mix with archive footage but end up slightly diluted, for when you can’t be certain of what is genuine 70 year-old film and what may well have been knocked up on a vintage video app, you question everything you see. That doesn’t make his work less enjoyable, just slightly more questionable.
The director paints with some broad strokes, sweeping through history at a fair old pace (the running time comes in at under 80 minutes), not giving himself much time to explore his ideas. However, the archive footage and photography that bind the film together are quite wonderful. The imagery of youngsters collected over the last hundred years or so is surprisingly moving, capturing the essence and vitality of people who are now either very frail or no longer with us. There is a poignancy in the smiles and hi-jinx of people who would go on to be lost in war, if not lost in time, and the final, rousing montage should have you leaving the cinema feeling uplifted. You may not feel as if you’ve learned a great deal, but you will feel better.
[usr=3] TEENAGE is released in select UK cinemas on Friday 24th January, 2014.
