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20th Century Women

  • 2016
  • R
  • 1h 59m
IMDb RATING
7.3/10
47K
YOUR RATING
Annette Bening, Billy Crudup, Elle Fanning, Greta Gerwig, and Lucas Jade Zumann in 20th Century Women (2016)
Trailer for 20th Century Women
Play trailer2:22
12 Videos
99+ Photos
ComedyDrama

The story of a teenage boy, his mother, and two other women who help raise him among the love and freedom of Southern California of 1979.The story of a teenage boy, his mother, and two other women who help raise him among the love and freedom of Southern California of 1979.The story of a teenage boy, his mother, and two other women who help raise him among the love and freedom of Southern California of 1979.

  • Director
    • Mike Mills
  • Writer
    • Mike Mills
  • Stars
    • Annette Bening
    • Elle Fanning
    • Greta Gerwig
  • See production, box office & company info
  • IMDb RATING
    7.3/10
    47K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Mike Mills
    • Writer
      • Mike Mills
    • Stars
      • Annette Bening
      • Elle Fanning
      • Greta Gerwig
    • 141User reviews
    • 234Critic reviews
    • 83Metascore
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Nominated for 1 Oscar
      • 13 wins & 73 nominations total

    Videos12

    20th Century Women
    Trailer 2:22
    Watch 20th Century Women
    20th Century Women
    Trailer 2:16
    Watch 20th Century Women
    20th Century Women | Official Trailer HD | A24
    Trailer 2:14
    Watch 20th Century Women | Official Trailer HD | A24
    20th Century Women Trailer
    Trailer 1:50
    Watch 20th Century Women Trailer
    Menstruation
    Clip 1:57
    Watch Menstruation
    Annette Elle Car
    Clip 2:05
    Watch Annette Elle Car
    Are You Happy
    Clip 1:08
    Watch Are You Happy
    Black Flag
    Clip 1:50
    Watch Black Flag
    20th Century Women: Are You Happy?
    Clip 1:08
    Watch 20th Century Women: Are You Happy?
    20th Century Women: Menstruation
    Clip 1:57
    Watch 20th Century Women: Menstruation
    20th Century Women: Black Flag
    Clip 1:49
    Watch 20th Century Women: Black Flag
    20th Century Women: Car Conversation
    Clip 2:05
    Watch 20th Century Women: Car Conversation

    Photos228

    Annette Bening and Lucas Jade Zumann in 20th Century Women (2016)
    Greta Gerwig in 20th Century Women (2016)
    Annette Bening and Billy Crudup in 20th Century Women (2016)
    Billy Crudup in 20th Century Women (2016)
    Annette Bening in 20th Century Women (2016)
    Elle Fanning and Lucas Jade Zumann in 20th Century Women (2016)
    Elle Fanning in 20th Century Women (2016)
    Annette Bening, Elle Fanning, and Greta Gerwig in 20th Century Women (2016)
    Annette Bening, Billy Crudup, Elle Fanning, Greta Gerwig, and Lucas Jade Zumann in 20th Century Women (2016)
    Greta Gerwig and Lucas Jade Zumann in 20th Century Women (2016)
    Annette Bening and Lucas Jade Zumann in 20th Century Women (2016)
    Annette Bening, Elle Fanning, and Greta Gerwig in 20th Century Women (2016)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Annette Bening
    Annette Bening
    • Dorothea Fields
    Elle Fanning
    Elle Fanning
    • Julie Hamlin
    Greta Gerwig
    Greta Gerwig
    • Abbie Porter
    Billy Crudup
    Billy Crudup
    • William
    Lucas Jade Zumann
    Lucas Jade Zumann
    • Jamie Fields
    Alison Elliott
    Alison Elliott
    • Julie's Mother
    Thea Gill
    Thea Gill
    • Gail Porter
    Vitaly Andrew LeBeau
    • Young Jamie Fields
    • (as Vitaly A. Lebeau)
    Olivia Hone
    • Julie's Sister
    Waleed Zuaiter
    Waleed Zuaiter
    • Charlie
    Curran Walters
    Curran Walters
    • Matt
    Darrell Britt-Gibson
    Darrell Britt-Gibson
    • Julian
    Alia Shawkat
    Alia Shawkat
    • Trish
    Nathalie Love
    Nathalie Love
    • Cindy
    Cameron Protzman
    Cameron Protzman
    • Teen in Therapy
    Victoria Bruno
    • Teen in Therapy
    John Billingsley
    John Billingsley
    • Abbie's OBGYN
    Cameron Gellman
    Cameron Gellman
    • Mark
    • Director
      • Mike Mills
    • Writer
      • Mike Mills
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      During rehearsals, the cast was encouraged to bring in music they believed their characters listened to. Then, to encourage familiarity among the cast, there would be a dance party where the only rule was that everyone had to dance and it didn't matter what the song was.
    • Goofs
      Dorothea is variously depicted discussing her stock portfolio with her son Jamie, quoting NYSE share prices in decimals, doing this in 1979. However, the switch to decimal from fractional stock prices in the U.S. did not occur until the year 2000.
    • Quotes

      Dorothea: Wondering if you're happy is a great shortcut to just being depressed.

    • Connections
      Featured in WatchMojo: Top 10 Movies of 2016 Already Getting Oscar Buzz (2016)
    • Soundtracks
      Don't Worry About the Government
      Written by David Byrne

      Performed by Talking Heads

      Courtesy of Sire Records

      By arrangement with Warner Music Group Film & TV Licensing

    User reviews141

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    8/10
    A Multi-Generational Cultural Exchange
    The scene feels remarkably familiar – Dorothea (Bening), the matron and saint of a Santa Barbara household circa 1979 leans in on her son Jamie (Zumann) listening to "Fairytale in the Supermarket" by The Raincoats. "They know they sound terrible right?" she says. Abbie (Gerwig), Dorothea's avant-garde lodger interjects; "yeah, but it's like they don't care. They got all this feeling but don't have the tools they need to express it…it all comes out as passion." Dorothea fixates on Abbie's intonation, like listening to language she's only now grasping. She gets it...but then she doesn't.

    Much like Abbie's defense of The Raincoats, Dorothea believes she has all the passion to be a proper mother, but she lacks the right tools to support a son who is growing older with each passing moment. She decides to enlist the help of two young women; Julie, Jamie's best friend and crush and Abbie a free spirit who was recently treated for cervical cancer. The only other man in the picture is William (Crudup) a well-meaning former hippie with a gift for mechanics and a passion for pottery. Between them all, the stalwart Dorothea hopes to quietly guide her son through his formative years which pit her depression era approach, to Jamie's recession era resentments. "Don't you need a man to raise another man?" asks Julie. "No I don't think you do." 20th Century Women starts with competing voice-overs and uses a collage approach to convey the surfaces of each character's inner life. The collages are stuffed to the brim with stills of 1930's gloom and 1960's turbulence all set to audio of proto-punk, Jimmy Carter's Malaise Speech and "As Life Goes By" from Casablanca (1942). It's an awkward mix; one that creates an echo chamber of sorts.

    That subtle discordance of people talking at and not to each other, runs through the first half of the film. Jamie's coming-of-age story, a volatile mix of stubborn familial resentment and unrequited love clobbers together with Dorothea's own midlife crisis. "I had Jamie when I was 40." Dorothea says; a fact that can help explain Dorothea's free-range parenting approach, but also helps explain why Jamie's sharp insights cut so deep. For a while there it always seems like its Jamie versus Dorothea, pulled apart by an ever widening generational gap.

    Then, like responding to the blessing of a wartime parlay, the factions in this film begin to center and calm. It is during this truce that the film begins to really take off, presenting its characters with vibrancy and humanity while flying through a more nuanced story arc. Almost independently both Jamie and Dorothea learn their goals are one in the same and the differences they have are little compared to their mutual respect for time which presents itself in rainbow tinged tracking shots and subtle fast-forwards.

    And at the center of 20th Century Women lies the affable Annette Bening who suitably captures the zeitgeist of a generation no longer with us. While most might pigeonhole Dorothea as a madcap eccentric or worse a passive pushover, Bening wisely lets the character's inner strength shine through. Dorothea is unabashedly a one of a kind lady. She invites strangers to dinner, invites herself to punk clubs, leaves early, and then comes back days later alone. She verves uncomfortably with post-sexual revolution mores yet she quietly takes frank conversations about menstruation in stride. She does all this because she knows that with every encounter, every meeting, every stranger there's a chance for exchange.

    Of course 20th Century Women is not without its problems. While Bening, Gerwig and Fanning all do wonders in their roles, Zumann fails to endear the young Jamie to the audience in any meaningful way. Part of it is due to the part as it is written. The film is loosely based on the life of director Mike Mills thus Jamie at times feels more like an avatar than a real teenager. Additionally it's ironic that despite constant paraphrasing of feminist literature, 20th Century Women would struggle to pass the Bechdel Test. Our three women characters orbit Jamie's life and analyze his actions and motives like he's the center of their universe.

    Yet, while the film uses the wider Women's Liberation movement as window dressing, allowing the external conflicts of the film to melt away to reveal honest internal pain was a stroke of genius. Genius enough to maybe be interpreted as a meta-text on standard storytelling practices being a form of patriarchal oppression. That however is a discussion for another day. 20th Century Women is an artfully rendered film with plenty to say about the passage of time, the commonality between the generation gaps and the unifying love of mother and son.
    helpful•50
    20
    • bkrauser-81-311064
    • Jan 15, 2017

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    24 Frames: Striking Images from A24 Films

    24 Frames: Striking Images from A24 Films

    Beau Is Afraid, The Green Knight, and more striking images from A24 studio's films.
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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • January 20, 2017 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Official sites
      • A24 Films
      • Official Facebook
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Twentieth Century Women
    • Filming locations
      • East Beach, Santa Barbara, California, USA(Santa Barbara, CA)
    • Production companies
      • A24
      • Annapurna Pictures
      • Modern People
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $7,000,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $5,664,764
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $111,200
      • Jan 1, 2017
    • Gross worldwide
      • $7,214,806
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 59 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Dolby Digital
    • Aspect ratio
      • 2.00 : 1

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