Purely by chance, the first 2017 film I happened to view in the new year just may be a portrait of our world in 2017. And it is not a pretty picture. The film is titled WITHDRAWN. It is a low-budget independent production from Canada, and it was screened at the Slamdance Film Festival.
The central character in WTTHDRAWN is Aaron, a tall, thin twentysomething with long blonde hair who shares an apartment with a roommate. Physically, he bears a resemblance to any contemporary young man you might pass on the street, but one only can hope that he is not your standard-issue modern-day twentysomething. Aaron’s world primarily is an online world. He exists in a culture of endless pin numbers and an ever-present fear of identity theft. He may place a phone call to whomever, but he finds himself put on hold with endless recorded messages repeating and repeating. Now does this sound familiar? And also, whenever Aaron watches television, all that appears onscreen are news reports of ISIS-related terrorism. But he is oblivious to all this, because Aaron is the product of a me-first culture. He has no ambition. He has no dreams. He has no money but is disinterested in going out and earning some, so he asks his mother to “help out with the rent.”
Aaron also has very little contact with his roommate. Their only conversations involve such petty five-and-dime topics as: Who is going to purchase a new printer’s ink cartridge? Who paid what for that last pizza order? All Aaron really wants to do is get high, squeeze anyone he knows for some quick cash, and conjure up schemes to hustle credit card companies for money. At one point, he comes up with a convoluted idea for a highly illegal credit card scam. Yet despite his lack of funds, he plans a trip abroad. Now surely, he intends to enjoy this excursion and worry about paying for it later, or perhaps even scheme to hustle his way out of paying for it later.
Aaron’s idea of multitasking is texting while urinating. Plus, he is endlessly toying with a Rubik’s Cube, which he endeavors to solve. But if he ever does, exactly what is it that he will have accomplished? So it is not by accident that a missive summing up Aaron is written on a bulletin board. And that missive is: “I feel nothing.”
Does WITHDRAWN offer up an accurate view of our world, our culture, in 2017? Does it put forth a representative view of today’s twentysomethings? Now granted, some may be just like Aaron, but I spend enough time in the company of young people to know that plenty of others are not little more than self-absorbed Aaron clones. Far from it...
Rob Edelman has authored or edited several dozen books on film, television, and baseball. He has taught film history courses at several universities and his writing has appeared in many newspapers, magazines, and journals. His frequent collaborator is his wife, fellow WAMC film commentator Audrey Kupferberg.
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