r e v i e w
You are going to die. Sorry, but we need to acknowledge that elephant in the room. It’s part of what makes The Forty-Year-Old Version so good.
Radha sees that elephant inch closer every day. A few years ago, hers was a life of promise. A playwright on a 30-Under-30 list, making her artist mother proud. But now? Mom’s gone. Radha has no plays on stage. She’s getting old, with nothing to show for it but a bad back and a dead-end job.
Showing, though, is what playwrights do. Without the chance to put her work out there, it doesn’t matter how insightful or witty Radha might be. For us, it seems unfair; but for her, it’s a life crisis. And looking around at rock bottom, she finds rhymes.
If you think it’s a stretch—like everyone she tells—it’s not. Whether by play or lyric, Radha’s writing is poetry. Performed for that elephant we all pretend not to see. When was the last time Drake or Run the Jewels rapped about the wider culture embracing poverty porn; how hard it is to lose weight; or how some white guys have black bootys?
Like the movie as a whole, Radha’s writing is observant and hilarious. But is it a breakthrough, or a creative hiccup? We can’t tell, because Radha won’t. She won’t compromise the integrity of her plays to guarantee stage-time, but she’s too unsure of herself to try and make a living out of rap. She might be talking to that elephant, but she’s not moving around the room.
We connect with Radha in this. Like all of us, her story is unfinished, and she’s unsure of the best way to continue it. Fans of plays, rap, NYC, art, comedy, philosophy, or acting/performing will like this movie; but even if that stuff turns you off, this movie is for you. It’s for anyone with a pulse struggling to do themselves justice (and who appreciates a joke along the way).
s t a n d o u t s — **spoiler alert**
(1) s n a p ( s h o t ) o p i n i o n s
Radha cares what people think. Sometimes, she even asks them. Although she’s in this car alone, she knows other people are on the same roller coaster.
These asides are very funny, and highlight how differently people think about things. The way Radha (who wrote and directed this movie!) distinguishes these moments from the rest of the story is by their small size. These hang like talking polaroids on an otherwise black widescreen. Snapshots of moments passed. Fits into the theme of life passing by, no?
(2) NYC
The city is a character—in several senses of the word.
From the first scene to the last, this setting affects Radha. Anyone who has lived in NYC understands the jarring and strange pleasure of having been awoken in the middle of the night by carnal moans leaking from the apartment next door. Of thanking a bus driver for letting you on a bus when they shouldn’t have, only to be met with an incredulous, even offended stare. Why are you talking to me? Of hoping your charity to a homeless person will be met with grace and thanks, only to be harassed.
This is where Radha lives, and what she has to contend with, each day. It can be draining. But whatever it can be, it has influenced her relationship with the world.
(3) l o o k a t m e / l o o k a t y o u
Radha breaks the fourth wall three times in this two hour movie. It’s a moviemaking convention some people shy away from, but which can be powerful when used a certain way.
The first time (which is always the most unexpected, and so potentially jarring) comes after Radha raps to herself in the mirror for the first time. This is during an evening in which she has blown yet another chance to have one of her plays put on stage; an evening after a long day of unfruitful teaching at school. The lyrics are raw: about sciatica; about always being horny but falling asleep instead of having sex; about being 40. This is a watershed moment for her, for us, and for rap, and at the height of this feeling, a few beats after she utters her final word, she sees herself in the mirror, and then looks at us. Guess what? RadhaMUSPrime and 40 ain’t nuttin ta fuck wit.
The second time Radha confronts us is while finishing another rap, during her first performance for somebody else (a beatmaker). Again, she is rapping about reality. How broader culture expects stories of misery and poverty from blacks—how such stories are the only thing expected, and considered the only art and contribution blacks can provide.
Radha is putting words to an unspoken reality, and it scathes. Her eyes at us pour salt in the wound.
The last time is not the least. In fact, it’s the most powerful. After Radha has sold out by turning one of her plays into poverty porn, after it has been enacted and the crowd has raved about it, Radha goes on stage to address the audience.
She gives thanks until she realizes that selling out is no longer for her. So she takes the opportunity to talk to fans of her false-self. And it is vintage Radha: powerful and articulate, funny but serious. Near the end of the monologue, the camera closes in. Radha looks the public, the elephant, us, right in the eye while speaking her truth. It is indictment, confession, and advice all at once.
“Every playwright hopes they don’t write a piece of shit like this play . . . Tired of selling my soul for these tokens . . . FYOV . . . fund your own vision . . . fill your own void . . . find your own voice . . . fuck you old vultures . . . forty-year-old version, that’s who I be.”
We need more Radhas to speak, and we need to allow more Radhas to speak. You can do both.
