The end titles somewhat cheekily credit Jean Piaget and Jean Jacques Rousseau among others, but Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 has neither the philosophical heft nor the dry tone of the work of such thinkers. Instead, the film attempts to give its viewer a new perspective on contemporary society by portraying characters from various social strata and their failure to reconcile their idealistic outlooks with the harsh reality of a capitalist system.
The film is structured as a series of disjointed scenes that gradually reveal a number of loosely connected narrative strands. Perhaps the most affecting strand is the one about Marie, a grocery store checkout girl who gives away as much food as she sells. Although some of her gifts to customers seem arbitrary, she also makes it a point to help elderly people with small pensions. Like several other characters, Marie herself is stuck with a menial job even though she seems to be capable of something more challenging and fulfilling. She even has to live in one country and work in another due to a scarcity of employment. Of course, her behavior is inevitably noticed and it garners her a harsh punishment. The same happens to an honest teacher who attempts to impart lessons about the failings of the capitalist way of life to high school children and (to a lesser degree) to the environmentalists who attempt to run an organic farm.
The technical aspects of the film are fairly well handled, although some of director Alain Tanner's choices were puzzling. He frequently splices in real life footage and he also switches to brief monochrome shots at fairly arbitrary intervals. This seems to have been an attempt to add a Cinéma vérité feel to the venture, but whatever the reason for its implementation, it often falls flat. Still, there are some strangely affecting images here, particularly in the bicycle sequence that incorporates some of the film's only landscape shots to make the human built structures appear forlorn and dingy against the natural backdrop. Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 is captivating but uneven, thought provoking but not profound.
The film is structured as a series of disjointed scenes that gradually reveal a number of loosely connected narrative strands. Perhaps the most affecting strand is the one about Marie, a grocery store checkout girl who gives away as much food as she sells. Although some of her gifts to customers seem arbitrary, she also makes it a point to help elderly people with small pensions. Like several other characters, Marie herself is stuck with a menial job even though she seems to be capable of something more challenging and fulfilling. She even has to live in one country and work in another due to a scarcity of employment. Of course, her behavior is inevitably noticed and it garners her a harsh punishment. The same happens to an honest teacher who attempts to impart lessons about the failings of the capitalist way of life to high school children and (to a lesser degree) to the environmentalists who attempt to run an organic farm.
The technical aspects of the film are fairly well handled, although some of director Alain Tanner's choices were puzzling. He frequently splices in real life footage and he also switches to brief monochrome shots at fairly arbitrary intervals. This seems to have been an attempt to add a Cinéma vérité feel to the venture, but whatever the reason for its implementation, it often falls flat. Still, there are some strangely affecting images here, particularly in the bicycle sequence that incorporates some of the film's only landscape shots to make the human built structures appear forlorn and dingy against the natural backdrop. Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 is captivating but uneven, thought provoking but not profound.