Welcome to Your Quarter-Life Crisis
‘The Graduate’ introduced us to twenty-something malaise, and these 5 films followed its lead
Meet Benjamin Braddock, quarter-life crisis patient zero.
“I’m just a little worried about my future. I’m a little upset about my future,” a young Dustin Hoffman as the aforementioned Ben Braddock tells Mr. Robinson, the long-time law partner of his father and husband of his soon-to-be- illicit-paramour, during his first night back home in Pasadena after graduating from an unnamed East Coast university.
In the minimalistic opening scene of the now-iconic Mike Nichols film, the recently bonafide young “track star” seems to almost sleepwalk through LAX (to one hell of a soundtrack, of course) before attempting to sequester himself safely in his childhood bedroom, away from his parent’s many friends and colleagues — many of whom, his proud parents remind him, have known Ben “practically since you were born,” and some of whom even “came all the way from Tarzana” to bestow best wishes on the kid they now categorize through his accomplishments: captain of the cross-country team, head of debating court, associate editor of the college newspaper. But where they see past achievements and an enviably open-ended future, Ben sees … no reason to leave his parent’s pool.
Not, mind you, because the young man who was gifted both an Alfa Romeo Series 1 Spider 160 (for graduation: not bad, kid) and a scuba suit (for his birthday: little random, parents, but it did facilitate some rather amazing cinematography, so you get a pass) is lazy, but rather, because he is lost. He has followed the path laid out for him by his upwardly mobile parents, subscribed to the protocol of post-World War II America — the America in which, as fellow Outtake writer Cammila Collar notes, “the middle class is still coasting on a kickass post-War economic boom that would later be known as (not even kidding) The Golden Age of Capitalism” — but now… what, exactly? (Besides plastics of course. We’ve heard there’s a great future in plastics.)
Thus out of ideas, he ambivalently falls into his somewhat sad affair with the beautiful, stifled-housewife, Mrs. Robinson. Because having an affair with a friend of your parents is nothing if not “different.” Because, Anne Bancroft. And because, hey, turns out her daughter’s pretty damn cute, too, and not, as it turns out, irreparably turned off by bad dates involving titty tassels and cases of mistaken identity in hotel lobbies. She will ultimately still run out of her wedding and onto a bus with you. Whether or not those infamous last looks reveal that she immediately regrets doing so is another subject entirely.
Either way, they can’t go back — even if they don’t know how the hell to move forward. And that: that temporarily tragic and all-consuming trepidation, that fear of the unknown, that sense that somehow you’ve messed up and missed out on your true purpose. That oh-so-lovely feeling is the anxiety-inducing root of the now oft-discussed quarter-life crisis.
Benjamin Braddock introduced us to it, and many, many films followed his lead — including these five, which become newly relevant again each spring as another graduation season commences. If you’re feeling the “what’s next” blues, settle in for a screening and take solace in knowing that you (or that person freaking out next to you) are not alone: life postgrad, pre-everything else is notoriously overwhelming. But at least it’s been captured on film … and rewatching a good movie (or a handful of good movies) really can make you feel better.
Tiny Furniture
The original movie posters for The Graduate informed us that Benjamin “was a little worried about his future.” Likewise, the poster for Tiny Furniture tell us that Aura, the fresh-from-film-school protagonist portrayed by a pre-Girls writer/director Lena Dunham, is “having a very hard time.”
Thus in a self-described “postgraduate delirium,” Aura moves back in with her mother and overachieving younger sister and proceeds to reluctantly drift through encounters with friends, generally disinteresting gentlemen, and a restaurant job that she ultimately quits, because it’s “boring and I have a college degree.” Unfortunately, said college degree didn’t come with its next steps readily built in; fortunately, Dunham has a deft way of personifying the resulting malaise.
Reality Bites
Oh, Winona. Long before ’90s icon Winona Ryder reemerged in the pop culture zeitgeist as distraught Stranger Things single mom Joyce Byers, she embodied post-grad life, mid peak slacker culture, as Lelaina Pierce, the jaded college valedictorian and aspiring documentary filmmaker at the center of Ben Stiller’s directorial debut, Reality Bites.
Anyone who’s ever applied to more jobs than they can count only to be summarily dismissed from all of them will no doubt viscerally appreciate Lelaina’s somewhat tortured attempts to land a gig even remotely related to her industry of choice. The love triangle at the center of the movie, focused on Lelaina, Troy (the king of cool kid apathy played perfectly by Ethan Hawke), and Michael (the guy-you’re-supposed-to-hate-because-he-has-a-real-job portrayed by Stiller), ages less well — see, Jezebel’s list of why Reality Bites is essentially a “manual for shitheads” — but ultimately, that only adds to it’s time capsule appeal.
Garden State
Zach Braff’s semi-autobiographical directorial debut sees the actor previously known largely for his role on Scrubs playing Andrew Largeman, a somewhat-but-not-really successful television actor living in Los Angeles who returns home to the garden state, aka New Jersey, for his mother’s funeral.
While there, he decides to come off the copious antidepressants that have been numbing his emotions for years, pals around with old high school acquaintances whose post-school lives have led to a series of odd jobs including grave digger and fast food knight, and strikes up a relationship with Sam, a manic pixie dream girl-incarnate portrayed by Natalie Portman.
Yep, this is the girl that infamously tells him The Shins will change his life. And yes, that phrase has been endlessly mocked at this point, but she’s not entirely wrong: it is damn good music. And Garden State is a damn good portrayal of early-aughts-angst — despite the at times contradictory backlash it inspired.
Kicking and Screaming
The recent grads of Noah Baumbach’s debut feature, Kicking and Screaming, have a simple solution for not wanting to leave college life behind: Don’t. Well, all except one of them: Jane, who is headed to Prague to study writing. Her boyfriend Grover, however, just plans to stay behind and move in with a group of equally reticent friends happy to wile away their days at the campus bars of their recent alma mater, avoiding the future and canonizing the recent past.
“I’m nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday,” one of them (Max) explains perfectly. “I’ve begun reminiscing events before they even occur. I’m reminiscing this right now.”
Frances Ha
Baumbach’s take on the quarter-life crisis, take two: this time, with Greta Gerwig.
The eminently likeable Gerwig stars as Frances, a clever, curious, twenty-something Brooklynite who wants to be a dancer — but she might not actually have the talent. She wants to live with her best friend Sophie forever (“we’re the same person,” she likes to say) — but then Sophie decides to move out of their shared apartment and into a neighborhood Frances loves but can’t afford. And so begins her crisis of self-discovery, involving rotating roommates, an ill-advised (and credit card debt-inducing) sojourn to Paris, and an ultimately charming battle to reconcile her idea of what her life should be with what it, well, is. Luckily for us, it’s a journey she undertakes with irrepressible charm — and sometimes, a little dancing in the street.
