Come on Children (1973) Allan King, Alan Dunikowsky, Ken Gibbs, John Hamilton, Documentary

November 13, 2016

Born of talks with four hundred disaffected teenagers in the suburban belt around Toronto, the film reflects their recurring theme: “Wouldn’t it be great if we weren’t hassled by parents and police, didn’t go to prison-like schools and could just get out of this polluted city and into the coun¬try and hang out with a bunch of kids like ourselves.” Would it? The filmmakers invited five boys and five girls ages 13 to 19 to live on a farm for ten weeks, to be filmed, and to see what might emerge for each of them personally.

In often subtle ways, each of the explorers discovered something about themselves. And, in a gentle, funny and touching way, the audience is allowed to re-experience what it is like to go through the stress and alienation of adolescence and come out whole on the other side. The film vividly captures the seismic shift in persona, social values and power from parents who grew up in the Depression and World War II to baby-boomers, who created a counter culture that dramatically altered the way we look at the world. The reshaping of family life, which the pill, divorce and new sexual mores produced: women working outside the home, the dramatic increase in wealth, the explosion of new suburbs and housing all brought new freedom and disturb¬ing stress. We are digesting it still.