Site of the landmark 1929-1937 "Middletown Studies" by Robert Straughton Lynd and Helen Merell Lynd, the town of Muncie, Ind., is the American continuum in microcosm, the place that produced both David Letterman and Jim B. "Garfield" Davis. In 1982 producer Peter Davis (Hearts and Minds) recruited filmmakers to use the Lynds' sociological studies as a jumping-off point for examining its populace once more.
The six resulting films, collectively called Middletown, were meant to be the crown jewel of PBS' 1982 programming. But Seventeen, screening 7 p.m. Thursday at Third Man Records, belongs to the pantheon of films that proved to be too much for PBS. After balking at changes the network requested due to drug use, racial incidents and dialogue related to sexual acts, Davis withdrew the film. That it eventually won the documentary prize at Sundance in 1985 was a small vindication.
Directors Joel DeMott and Jeff Kreines were no strangers to potentially awkward or dangerous situations: Their exceptional 1980 unmaking-of horror-movie doc Demon Lover Diary remains a cautionary tale for all filmmakers and aspiring artists. But here they found a community where the operatic dramas of high school life were amplified by racial and class tensions, where prejudices flared matter-of-factly while would-be gang wars fizzled and dissipated.
Lynn is the closest thing to a main subject: We see her in class, in several romantic relationships, and as the focal point in a brief town-wide freakout over interracial dating. Tempestuous Michelle doesn't get nearly as much screen time, but her rage and acerbic wit linger. Through Robert, who is dealing with uncertain romantic footing and unplanned parenthood, the viewer sees what life entails for Muncie's black residents (something the Lynd studies didn't even attempt).
And then there is Churchmouse, whom we never meet but whose tragic circumstances provide the film with its most wrenchingly sustained sequence (and Bob Seger with explosive point-blank emotional force). Few documentaries so cry out for a "where are they now?" update, but in keeping with DeMott and Kreines' aesthetic approach, there is none.
Beyond its perceptive empathy and exceptionally close observation, Seventeen documents a youth culture that simply doesn't exist anymore. Given the rise of personal computers and the cellphone, we find youth more resourceful and informed, but also more isolated on a basic human level. MTV's The Real World pretty much killed youth ethnographic documentary cinema; it's easy to see how that show formulated its hype-the-cast aesthetic in reaction to Seventeen's gracious egalitarianism.
But it's a source of the movie's strength that the filmmakers don't grant us godlike omniscience. We aren't given exclamatory monologues or extensive prep as to each person's backstory. We are voyeurs, but in the sense of having been present, like at a party — or a wake. Seventeen remains one of the most essential films ever made about American youth.
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