Customer Reviews

Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 [VHS]

5 star:		(7)
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3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
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I disagree with some of the reviews posted on Jonah in that the themes of the film are outdated and that the characters are not as well-develped as they should be. I believe that the film is DEFINITELY NOT outdated because it revolves around people and the ideas, thoughts, and wisdom that human beings can give to their fellow man and woman. Sure, the politics are not the same in Europe anymore, but did you honestly believe that the political climate of Europe in 1976 would still be relevant in 2004, 28 years after the film was made?
I believe that Jonah captures the changing political climate in Europe in the mid-1970's quite elegantly;I sure have never seen anything like it before or since. I also think that the characters need not be developed further, because Tanner intended for each of them to be archetypes for the changing socio-economic climate in Europe, and in the world. If you study each character in this manner, then they are perfect the way that they are.
Bottom line: find this movie where ever you can. Rent it from a nearby library, (I doubt that Blockbuster carries it)or buy it from eBay, or here on Amazon. It takes a great deal of concentration, but every second is incredibly rewarding to the attentive movie viewer. I have never ever seen a film with dialogue this captivating, and I wish that I were alive in 1976 (I am currently 19)so that I could have seen the film when it was first released. I only wish that it could finally be released on DVD. I have searched the internet over many times for a copy of the film on DVD. I even recently purchased a DVD-R player, and due to the copyright guard on the VHS copy that I rent frequently from my neighborhood library, I was unable to make the digital transfer. Regardless, the VHS will suffice for the time being, and once again, (I cannot stress this enough)find a friend who is into art house films or investigate at a library and watch this film. You will be surprised.

Jonah Who Will be 25 in the Year 2000 may or may not be among the best films ever made, but it is surely one of the most interesting. Not only is watching this film an eminently worthwhile activity; it is also worthwhile to consider WHY watching it is worthwhile. For one thing, it is hard to seize on any one idea as the film's theme. It is about freedom. But it is also about the nature of time and memory, about historical change, old age, education, mysticism, situation ethics, revolution, and the relative merits of animals and humans, just to name the most apparent. Jonah tells the story of eight characters in search of a polis. All have names beginning in "Ma." ("Marx?" "Mao?" The names remind us that this film comes from a time when such questions were relevant.) The eight characters spin off a profusion of ideas, explicitly in their conversation and implicitly in their actions. Ideas reverberate throughout the film, as the characters work and hope for a better system (the hope symbolized by infant Jonah). But their efforts to achieve a better system raise the question as to what this new system will be like. Here the film is less than optimistic. The happy union of collective achievement and individual fulfilment is never achieved; it remains only an ideal -- an ideal that demands reflection and criticism. If we are ever to achieve the good society, we have to think well, an activity for which the characters of JONAH provide good models.

Jonah Who Will be 25 in the Year 2000 may or may not be among the best films ever made, but it is surely one of the most interesting. Not only is watching this film an eminently worthwhile activity; it is also worthwhile to consider WHY watching it is worthwhile. For one thing, it is hard to seize on any one idea as the film's theme. It is about freedom. But it is also about the nature of time and memory, about historical change, old age, education, mysticism, situation ethics, revolution, and the relative merits of animals and humans, just to name the most apparent. Jonah tells the story of eight characters in search of a polis. All have names beginning in "Ma." ("Marx?" "Mao?" The names remind us that this film comes from a time when such questions were relevant.) The eight characters spin off a profusion of ideas, explicitly in their conversation and implicitly in their actions. Ideas reverberate throughout the film, as the characters work and hope for a better system (the hope symbolized by infant Jonah). But their efforts to achieve a better system raise the question as to what this new system will be like. Here the film is less than optimistic. The happy union of collective achievement and individual fulfilment is never achieved; it remains only an ideal -- an ideal that demands reflection and criticism. If we are ever to achieve the good society, we have to think well, an activity for which the characters of JONAH provide good models. Incidentally, JONAH was the model for RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS SEVEN which was followed in turn by THE BIG CHILL and another film whose name I can't remember. Quality varied inversely with distance from the original.

I'm with previous reviewer Alex Fencl on this film. While the specifics of the politics have inevitably changed in 35 years, their essence remains quite relevant. What becomes of ideals dismissed & derided by the status quo? What becomes of the striving individuals who hope & work for more than the false & empty idols of consumerism & complacency? And most importantly of all, how does one live an authentic, meaningful life in an increasingly superficial & valueless society?

If those aren't relevant questions for any thinking, feeling human being, then nothing is relevant. The friends in this film may be idealists, but they're not fools. They know they're going against the tide; they know their hopes are more than likely doomed to failure. Yet they persevere, if for no other reason than the importance of living a genuine life, of asserting values deeper than the newest gadget & homogenized news. Perhaps they can change & help a few other people; at the very least, they can prevent the world from changing & destroying them.

It's astounding to me that this film isn't available on DVD - but not entirely surprising, given the temper of our times. When the majority prefers shiny celebrities & so-called "reality" shows to actual ideas that might actually affect their lives, there probably isn't a very big audience for something so thoughtful & humanly engaging. More's the pity - if anything, this film offers precisely what so many of us need now. It's not merely a time capsule of another era, a positive worldview cast aside in the dust; it's a reminder of what civilization & culture are supposed to mean.

Most highly recommended, if you can find it!

Alain Tanner is the most conspicuous Swiss filmmaker. His visible influences come fundamentally from Jean Luc Godard. The insertion of admirable thoughts supported by excellent micros fit with impressive eloquence. Images and text integrate this wonderful film.

This is very curious movie. It allows to gather a crowd of people, with his dreams and hopes. We have a unemployed father who decides to work in a little farm with two clever characters; a clever History teacher with his own learning profile, who falls in love with the lovely Miou Miou, who works in a Swish supermarket and has to cross over to sleep in France.

Jonas is child who will have 25 years old in 2000. In this sense a true parade of serious concerns around politics, environmental issues, killed whales all over the world that unbalance the ecologic cycle and generating in this sense an overpopulation of shrimps.
It is an ambitious and very original loaded of immense humanity and tenderness.

One of my favorite pictures of this talented director.

"Jonah who will be 25 in the year 2000" is a truly remarkable film that portrays the "New World" after the World Wars and political revolutions. Ultimately, it is a heart-felt drama of the realities of the human condition. The Directing and filming is first-rate. My older brother whose name happens to be Jonah, will be 25 in the year 2000, also. Talk about coincidence!

I think that the film is great because I love Jonah

The political notions in this film are embarassing and so completely tied to a particular naive era. I was very much a part of it and have rejected it.

What will really last about this film for me is that I saw it on a date. Our love affair blossomed and was based on the same foolish notions, intellectual climate and naive beliefs saturating the film. Our child should have been 20 in the year 2000. Is was not. Like the notions motivating the film, the dreams of the love affair paralleled the dreamy vacuousness of the values of the characters in the film. Nothing survives. No Jonah. No dream. No reality. No touch. Just the embarassment of having lived hard and hopefully in the 1970s and crashing on the actual nature of real humans under real stress. It was all thought-dream fantasies and promises. It turned out to be all cowardice and lies and secrets and silences. And, this is the reason the film seems so dated and empty. It has the charm of a memory and a time. It never existed in any real dimension that created any artifacts that will ever be recovered to be displayed in the British Museum. There will only be the VHS copy of this film...dated and obsolete and unviewed as the last VHS machine clicks and grinds, fails and stops, ejecting the shredded tape.

Alas, in the year 2001 this film does not appear to have aged very well. It is full of the type of moralizing and philosophizing that was so the rage -- especially in France -- in the '60s and '70s, which now seems hopelessly naive and irrelevant. Plot? Characterizations? Linear storyline? Who needs these when we're expounding on the Major Issues of Our Times!? Prettily filmed, with an attractive cast (most of whom don't get to do all that much), but ultimately a fine example of cinematic navel-gazing. I liked this film when it first came out -- but now, for the life of me, I couldn't tell you why.