Suburbia at a Crossroads in '20th Century Women'

President Jimmy Carter’s 1979 “crisis of confidence” speech figures prominently in Mike Mills’s new film, 20th Century Women. In the speech, Carter asks the American people to choose a different path, one that involves less consumption, materialism, and self-interest. Sacrifice in order to solve the energy crisis is at the heart of the speech, but Carter’s words speak to ethics more broadly:

In 20th Century Women, set in the Santa Barbara suburb of Montecito, a group watches the speech together. They sit in the large but crumbling home of the film’s protagonist, Dorothea, a single mother raising a teenage son. Though her guests make disparaging remarks about the speech, Dorothea pronounces it “beautiful.”