JONAH WHO WILL BE 25 IN THE YEAR 2000

Tanner's film is a playful exploration of the lives of eight ex-revolutionaries of the 1960s. Now all in their early thirties, they're wasting away at jobs considerably less romantic than they had envisioned in their radical youth. Like their American counterparts, these stranded creatures seem ludicrous in their iconoclasm; they're the drugstore cowboys of the Protest Movement, poignantly wondering where the parade's gone, and longing for the good old bad days when moral and political issues were more sharply defined. Most of the characters still employ the rhetoric of “Commitment,” a weird melange of Marxist cant and genuine humanitarian concern. But there's something admirable too in their refusal to be sucked up by the easy blandishments of bourgeois life. Their reckless idealism has been buried by the cruel indifference of history, yet stubbornly the characters refuse to join the crowd and forget their youthful dreams. Written by John Berger, the Marxist art critic and novelist, the movie maintains a tenuous balance between satire and sympathy. At their worst, the characters are sanctimonious, shrill and morally inconsistent – just like the old days. But at least they're alive and kicking. And like many of the aging children of the '60s, they have a special kind of grace, an extraordinary romantic readiness that wistful people of all ages secretly admired in the youth of that era. Today, young people are much more sane and sensible: The times have forced them to be more cautious, more modest in their aspirations, more reasonable in their sense of the future's possibilities. Perhaps a bit defensively, they shake their heads in wonderment at the flamboyance of their predecessors just a decade ago. As Tanner and Berger demonstrate, there was much that was faintly absurd about the youth of the '60s – but also something magical and exhilarating.