The 40 Year Old Version
Ratings: 4.2/5
Director: Radha Blank
Production: Radha Blank, Lena Waithe, Jordan Fudge, Inuka Bacote-Capiga, Jennifer Semler, Rishi Rajani
Genre: Comedy
Language: English
Release Date: 9th October, 2020
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Star Cast: Radha Blank, Peter Kim, Oswin Benjamin, Reed Birney, Imani Lewis, TJ Atoms, Welker White, Haskiri Velazquez, Jacob Ming-Trent, Antonio Ortiz, Stacey Sargeant, William Oliver Watkins, Meghan O’Neill, André Ward
Plot:
Radha is a down-on-her-luck NY playwright, who is desperate for a breakthrough before 40. Reinventing herself as a rapper, she vacillates between the worlds of Hip Hop and theatre in order to find her true voice.
Review:
The film starts with Blank teaching a playwriting class in New York City as one of “30 under 30 Playwrights to Watch.”
“Remember, if you put in nothing, it will be nothing,” she tells her students. In true New Yorker fashion, one of them sneakily asks, “Like your career?”
‘The Forty-Year-Old Version’ also stars rapper Oswin Benjamin, who makes his feature film acting debut.
Blank plays a fictionalized version of herself, a playwright who pays her bills by teaching high school theatre. She hasn’t staged a new play in a while and her agent and childhood best friend Archie (a charming Peter Kim) doesn’t hesitate to remind her of that every chance he gets.
The movie was shot almost entirely on 35mm black and white film by cinematographer Eric Branco, who shot ‘Clemency’. It pays serious homage to Spike Lee’s ‘She’s Gotta Have It’. 40-Year-Old Version still asserts itself in a way that feels absolutely original and not a xerox copy and creates a grand cinematic experience.
The film is kind of like a tribute to the people of pre-gentrified Harlem, to old-school hip-hop, to struggling artists, to young people with big dreams and to black women who dare to live life out of the box. With a creative visual language, an inventive Greek Chorus who projects beautifully - the diversity! This is a funny but thought-provoking film.
It not only the main cast who creates the magic; there are several supporting characters that make an impact in their single scenes: a bus driver, a battle rapper, a sharp-tongued black lady using a walker. It is Blank’s story, but it is also the story of her family and her community, and everyone has a valuable role to play.
There are many ways the film battle raps with historical representations of black women onscreen, and ultimately it wins the duel. The character of Radha Blank is historic and iconic: a black woman protagonist, who is middle-aged, has no children, has a love interest 20 years her junior and uses her unapologetic bluntness who is in front of her. She also refuses to give up on her art.
The 40-Year-Old Version is a beautiful achievement and takes one’s attention to the huge potholes in representation of different kinds of black characters in films. This film fills up all those potholes.
