The Netflix movie 40 year old version revolves around the character Radha, a 40 year old character who’s recognized but unrealized potential takes a different turn to get realized at a later stage of her life. She’d been recognized as “most promising 30 under 30” playwright but hadn’t produced a play in quite some time. By satirically and publicly criticizing New York’s theater scene, with the Forty-Year-Old-Version, the movie inventively offers a crisp analysis of the struggles faced by older Black women creators.
Radha pays her bills by teaching drama with one of her students Elaine, a significant character. She spits unvarnished truth: Radha hadn’t written something meaningful since 2010. This reality check leads her to write a hip-hop mixtape.
Radha writes RAP (rhythm and poetry) about bodily pitfalls of aging which is where the movie becomes relevant to the module taught in class. This is the point starting where Radha unleashes her emotion with the film’s rhythmic and visual element flourish together to create the film’s most evocative photography. With whip-pans and handheld shots, the movie’s grainy black-and-white cinematography energetically blurs the lines between documentary and narrative cinema, giving the film a lyrical neo-realism texture.
The most conspicuous element of the movie is the color it is shot in: black and white with colors popped out at significant moments such as when Radha calls here play “Haarlem Ave.,” to a prospective producer. Perhaps the use of color was to symbolize the races black and white which is the talk of the movie in a lot of spots or it could also be to show the movie to us from the perspective of a 40 year old with occasional popping out of color symbolizing return to youth and realization of past-potential.
The movie combines it’s visual, auditory, and other elements to ingeniously let the main character Radha manifest her self-doubts about performance, integrity, and sex. Radha and D visit the Queen of the Ring rap battle where female hip-hop artists are pitted against each other. This underground competition allows the movie to allow minority to express their voices in rhythmic delight. It is where the auditory element of the movie overpowers and bolsters the whole movie making it a delight for a RAP connoisseur like me.
In the later part of the movie, Radha’s play Harlem Ave., is brought into criticism and questioning by white gatekeepers who ask questions of her play. It reflects on how Black people in the visual and literary arts are continually forced to defend their viewpoints with them being told to convert their authentic narratives into slave musicals or all-white plays, or make other compromises.
All in all, amid the swooning jazz soundtrack, this movie is a fresh and combative work that is hilarious but at at the same time delivers many meaningful and truthful messages.
