Lane 1974

What an excellent, sometimes heart-rending film. It's not a "coming of age" story of the stereotyped first sex or first violence type, rather, the 13-year-old protagonist learns how unfair and unhelpful adults can be, and finally works up enough courage to try to improve her situation on her own.

Lane 1974 reminds each of us who care about others that no matter how crappy our own childhood was, it could have been just as crappy in a totally different fashion. It's set only a few years after my own era, but the 1970s California hippie, doper, back-to-nature culture is complete foreign to me, other than in film. And yet it was so well acted, both by Lane and her mother - who prefers to be called "Hallelujah" - and so well written and directed, that I believed every minute of it.

Watching it hurts, of course. Seeing a child go hungry makes me appreciate even that nasty powdered milk from the welfare department. It hurts just enough: I'm amazed at the delicate editorial touch that kept the film real without descending into constant, unrelenting pathos.

The film ends abruptly, but at exactly the right time. Not all is well, but there is hope. Kudos to everyone involved.

I really enjoyed Lane's character as she navigates her mother's contrarian, irreverent forays into ever deeper abnormality. This was very relevant to me for personal reasons. A great reminder that children need stability and will rebel in order to get it. Lane's introspective journey was well portrayed. The visit with the grandparents was especially poignant. Being born into an anti-establishment family carries very different burdens for children and this film portrays them with great sensitivity and subtlety. There are very few films I'd watch twice but I'm considering making Lane 1974 an exception.

Maybe there's not a lot of room out there for something rather "classic" like this. It reminds me of some good French cinema; very unAmerican. Think ontological realism. I'm a person who happens to like films in which not much happens on the surface. No great plot here. But this is a very honest film about lost childhood. The young actress is superb and this filmmaker has taken their time to see through a humble, careful, quiet vision. It's how life is lived. I was mesmerized and even moved by this atypical look at a "coming of age" of a sort.

I wasn't really impressed by this story if I have to be honest. For a biography I thought it would be something special but it's just the story about a bunch of hippies living of the grid. Probably the most unhappy hippies I ever witnessed. The mother is clearly a bit deranged, not an easy person to live with, and that's quite the opposite I would imagine with hippies. The acting is good though, from the whole cast. But the story is just a bit boring, not really anything special about it. You just feel kind of sorry for the children but that's about it qua emotions.

There are two related things that make this an amazing movie: One is the director's ability to capture Sophia Mitri Schloss' great performance as a child who grows up in various communes in the 1970's. It is difficult trick to create a continual set of images that provide an immediate and profound connection to a single character's emotional state. Somehow, SJ Chiro manages do this in such a way that one always feels deeply connected to Lane's emotions.

The second is the film's amazing aesthetic sensibility. Every shot is a kind of beautiful tableau, often of the protagonist in a natural setting. This is not for its own sake: Even though the film contains a lot of sadness and instability, there is always the sense that each scene is connected to the richness of Lane's own sensory and emotional experiences, that her own intense sensory perceptions transcend the various forms of loss that she experiences.

You may leave with the sense that your own sense of empathy and emotional receptiveness has been heightened by this beautiful film.