Seventeen

Being seventeen in the small US town of Muncie proves tough for an opinionated female high school student in this Frederick Wiseman style observational documentary. The film opens in a home economics classroom run by a teacher with poor behaviour management, and as the film then moves to the principal and another classroom in which a teacher complains about his students completing an assignment incorrectly, the documentary initially exposes how little school actually prepares kids for the real world - an agenda furthered by the revelation of a student pregnancy, which does not faze anyone except the home economics teacher who wants the baby's parents to get married. And yet, 'Seventeen' often travels outside of the school environment for lengthy periods as we see the home life of the girl, her hanging out in bars and so forth. It is ultimately hard to say what exactly the documentary is meant to be about. It was apparently commissioned as a part of study into the town, but it becomes more about the teenager with a pivotal moment as she realises that she has to write a report for home economics - a class that she only took because she thought it would be a breeze. The film was apparently suppressed for years for showing just how foul-mouthed, corrupted and unmotivated the youth of Muncie were, and this insight (if hard shocking) is admittedly sort of interesting.

Check the demographic breakdown for the user ratings. Fascinating. Apparently young men think this is awful while middle-aged guys (yeah, that's me) think it's great.

What this is, is simply the most intimate documentary ever made, and it's subjects are 'regular people', specifically lower-middle-class teens in Muncie, Indiana. I guess some reviewers feel such folks aren't worth making a film about, and would rather watch movies about wizards and elfin princesses. For those who find reality interesting, 'Seventeen' is 'direct cinema' (aka cinema verite) taken as far as the form can go. It was shot with a fixed focal length wide-angle lens, which means that the camera is basically within 4-8 feet of the subjects most of the time. This yields amazing revelatory moments, and perhaps a sense of queasiness on exactly the same grounds, the subjects are pretty exposed. This caused a fair amount of controversy. The film had been commissioned for a PBS series, and PBS (cowards) dropped it. The film has continued to be largely repressed, and is seldom screened. If you get a chance to see it, DO NOT PASS IT UP. You will never see anything else quite like it, and whether you 'like' it or not it's a unique and thought provoking experience.

I can't do much but repeat what the other two reviews have said. This is an amazing, thought-provoking piece of cinema verite. From the team who brought us the incredible "Demon Lover Diaries" comes this biting insight into the life of teens in middle America.

I first saw this my freshman year in college. I loved its naturalistic style, and it reminded me of my own growing up in Midwestern USA.

I saw it again in another class a couple of years later, and with a little bit of perspective, I enjoyed it even more for the filmmakers' incredible ability to capture their subjects without any influence or changing the subjects' actions.

As others have mentioned, it was commissioned by PBS as a part of a series on Muncie, Indiana, which had been named the "population center" of the United States at the time, and therefore truly "Middle America." Other documentary filmmakers made pieces for this series that were more conventional looks at the town and its history. One thing that I do think other reviewers have wrong is saying that PBS did not air this. At both screenings I attended, it was stated that it did air on PBS once, but was pulled from further re-broadcasts of the "Middle America"/"Muncie" series.

Any bootlegs you can find (and they are rare, even by bootleg standards) come from this initial PBS broadcast, more than likely. I consider myself extremely lucky to have seen this on the big screen (at USC) not once, but twice, and it has left an indelible mark on my memory. If you get ANY chance to see it, buy it, borrow it, etc., do not miss the opportunity.

I recently saw this film at BAM, with one of the filmmakers present. It was beautiful looking -- in contrast to the horrible DVD that is now being offered (with no connection to the filmmakers, apparently) that looks like it was transferred to video at K-Mart.

Wait for the real version -- don't be fooled by the DVD from Icarus. If the film doesn't start with the title Seventeen, hand-written, it is NOT the filmmaker's version -- it's a censored and ugly attempt at making a few bucks.

In the meantime, read the filmmakers' NOTES ON SEVENTEEN, which you can find on the film's Wikipedia page -- learn how the film was really made, and how it was suppressed.

It is a brilliant film, and worthy of being seen as intended -- so don't buy the DVD!

If you go to the film's Wikipedia site, or to realseventeenmovie, you will find a link to see the real, uncut version of the film. No charge. No gimmicks. If the film you saw or bought on DVD or paid to stream doesn't have handwritten titles, it's not the real film.

Don't settle for the censored substitute!