‘While We’re Young’: Gen-X Integrity Versus Gen-Y Slick

Mark Jackson
Updated:

Free-solo rock climbing: 500 feet off the deck, hanging off fingertips—no rope. The traditional climbing rules are to figure out the challenges as you go, from the ground up. One slip of focus and a free-solo climber dies.

Granted, that’s the extreme end of it. But the original, roped mountaineering ethics championed adventure, courage, and controlling your mind.

In the 1980s, Generation-X “hang-doggers” dropped down on climbing ropes from cliff tops to pre-inspect routes and drill bolts, putting safety first. This turned the sport into safe, gymnastic fun. The ability to test and grow one’s inner character through danger went missing.

The fairly fun “While We’re Young” is the documentary filmmaker version of the above adventure-climbing versus safe-bolting: the truthful documentary versus the faux, faked documentary.

Today’s Generation Y yearns for and pays tribute to some kind of romanticized, analog echt-ness while being profoundly, scarily (often hypocritically) in virtuoso command of all things digital. A turntable does give a truer sound than CD and mp3. But if you fake your footage, aren’t you a liar?

“While We’re Young” opens with dialogue from Ibsen’s “The Master Builder,” about a middle-aged architect who, while showing off to a young woman, falls off his own scaffolding and dies.

 It’s an apropos selection because 40-something documentarian Josh (Ben Stiller) meets 20-something documentarian Jamie (Adam Driver from HBO’s “Girls”), tries to show off (he’s always wanted a protégé), and is yanked off the scaffolding of his orthodox, dated documentary ethics by Jamie’s less-than-scrupulous “whatever” hipster zeitgeist.

Josh and Cornelia (Naomi Watts) are the last sans-kids couple of their peer group. Their best friends just had a kid and are applying peer pressure. Josh and Cornelia are not having it.

Ben Stiller as Josh and Naomi Watts as Cornelia. (Courtesy of A24)
Ben Stiller as Josh and Naomi Watts as Cornelia. Courtesy of A24
Mark Jackson
Mark Jackson
Film Critic
Mark Jackson is the chief film critic for The Epoch Times. In addition to film, he enjoys martial arts, motorcycles, rock-climbing, qigong, and human rights activism. Jackson earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Williams College, followed by 20 years' experience as a New York professional actor. He narrated The Epoch Times audiobook "How the Specter of Communism is Ruling Our World," available on iTunes, Audible, and YouTube. Mark is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic.
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