Milestones

Shot as 'fictional' documentary, Milestones amounts to a three-and-a-half hour testament to a generation. Despite the cinéma-vérité style, the scope of the project is epic: the interconnecting lives and lifestyles of various young people scattered across America as a generation of white activists or dropouts ponder 'where they're at'. Milestones is almost entirely about people talking. Sometimes this compulsion to talk everything through - and an obsessive need for reassurance - amounts to moving in circles, not forward; what optimism there is seems almost wilfully naive and painfully fragile. The film refrains from judging its characters, which is why some may find it boring. But, as with Kramer's Ice, it's a film that will doubtless gain with age: posterity is left to decide whether the generation on view found a new future or lost its way.