Francis Ha

Few films in the modern era capture the drunken hysteria and frowning existentialism that's experienced by the current 25-37 year old. The psychological damage of the parades of addresses and room mates and families built within days, that last mere seasons, has yet to be fully addressed. (mind you this is coming from a current 21 year old that's spent a life so in a rush to become an adult and be named a grown woman that my left hand is weighed down by diamonds and the pain and excitement of first or second love).  That being said there I am, dragging this fiance of sorts to the IFC to see "FRANCIS HA".
This film brings to a head the pangs of reality for the sake of art. In black and white, it paints the hazy magic of a memory while still consistently displaying the cold concrete of coming of age- not forgetting the  emotional distress in the realization one is rapidly approaching middle age. It exfoliates the internal sadness of realizing your youth is over and your life is beginning and all those times that everyone told you would be the quote, unquote, "time of your life" have come to an end while you were out there trying to be an artist and clinging to the man you lost your virginity to. It spear heads the ugly and bitter realization that your life in retrospect always sounds a million times more romantic than it is.

It brings up the idea that bliss is usually:

a.) made up and hasn't happened yet
b.) written in the form of a blog, and therefor written with the subconscious understanding that our mother will at some point google you and read this
c.) something that's happened long enough ago that it's filtered in a memory more beautiful than any instagram option can mask

The social media driven era makes you unconditionally and consequentially miserable.

This is were we are socially as awful as those that came before us. you know the ones we swore we'd never be. those in the nineties who in the moment thought they had it we had it the worst our current state would crush. fuck them we have it the worst. because it's all under this pressure of facebook which is a living high school reunion . this means, while for our parents it happened once every ten years, for us it happens every day and at the very least several times a week. we are living our parent hell and we we are trying to drown it our with a new york city vice tax that quadruples the vice tax of ever was and we're making the entry level job salary of 1993 -what the fuck are we supposed to do with that?!

and that's not to say we aren't aspiring artists or bankers but we're not. we don't stand a chance to be anything but posers because that's what all a generation equipped with 24 hour surveillance is allowed and given the tools to be. the days of dial-up are gone and with it the freedom to fail in the privacy of our own lives. and "Francis Ha" is the perfect essay to explain all of which I just attempted to, but in the slurry well scored cinematic way that makes you feel like you've taken a bath in art and modernity and in the end  are re-entering the world both cultured and clean.

more or less, go see it.