Please excuse the slapdash nature of this response. I am privileged to know the filmmaker in question, the lovely Brendan Prost, so it seemed a little impersonal just to do a review, and besides, who the fuck am I to judge, right? Objectivity is out of the question, so this piece will be formatted as a hybrid collection of thoughts and response directly to an auteur as talented as he is short (which is to say, very).
I.The Skinny
Generation Why? (from here on referred to as GW) is ostensibly a movie about rebellion. Not the wet slap rebellion of adolescence, absent the multicolored hairstyles and Juggalo face paint. It is more a rebellion at an age where rebellion is seen as not just juvenile, but pathetic. Patience is relatively boundless while a person is in high school with a society at large conditioned to expect a certain degree of ridiculousness out of a person aged 13-19. GW attempts to understand an the disconcertingly immediate change in expectations following the graduation from that age bracket, and is fairly effective in doing so. However, I am of the opinion that that is not where the greatest philosophical strength of the film lies. I’ll get back to that.
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