20th Century Women, a film written and directed by Mike Mills, is about a single mother named Dorothea, raising her son with the help of two other women. While telling the story of her son, Jamie, the movie also reveals the lives of the two women, Abbie and Julie. It exposes the real lives of women through the main characters. Since the events take place in California 1979, it shows the contrasting aspects of life then and now. 20th Century Women is an empowering and beautiful film that highlights the lives of women and men. 

        One of the most complex characters in the film that begins to show the mind of a woman is Dorothea Fields, a 55-year-old divorced mother. She had her son, Jamie, at the age of 40. Everyone around her told her she was too old to be a mother, but she did not care what anyone had to say about her. All she cared about was Jamie. Since the beginning of the movie, Dorothea’s loneliness is talked about. Jamie often worries that she’ll always be alone and unhappy. He always asks her questions about her life, but she never gives him a concrete answer. Which shows that she doesn’t want to let him know what she’s feeling. In her world, all she worries about is Jamie. The director of the film lets the audience know how she feels through her expressions and tone. She never really talks about herself, unless someone causes her to think about herself. Throughout the movie, she does everything she can to make Jamie happy and be the best man he can be, but she never really thinks about herself. Her selflessness and caring personality is just what a mother is.         Another woman who shows the difficulties that a woman goes through is Abbie Porter, a 31-year-old that lives with Dorothea and Jamie. She’s one of the women that Dorothea enlists in helping Jamie be himself. She was diagnosed with cervical cancer years before and was currently recovering from it. But, she was later told that she couldn’t have children. Abbie is a talented photographer, who loves punk music and is a feminist. To help Jamie become a better man, she gave him feminist literature and made him learn about the female reproductive system. She also took him to clubs and taught him how to talk to girls. In Abbie’s world, she does whatever she wants and loves everyone. She is the exact model of a woman who is carefree and determined. Abbie is a woman who respects and loves herself. She represents women everywhere that do exactly what they want and get exactly what they want. 
        The last woman who reveals the secret lives of women is Julie Hamlin, a 17-year-old who is best friends with Jamie. She calls herself “self-destructive” because she started doing drugs to get distant from her family. Julie is the other woman that helps Jamie become himself. Throughout the movie, Jamie constantly tells or shows Julie that he’s in love with her, but she doesn’t return those feelings. Instead, she is always turns him down and tells him she wants to stay friends. She teaches him that being strong and taking control of your emotions is more important than feeling emotions. Which really helps understand her character a bit more. Julie is a teenager who skipped the teenage life and went directly to adulthood. She opens up about how she lost her virginity at 14 with a random boy because she just decided to lose her virginity that day. She also often tells Jamie how half the time, she regrets having intercourse. She hides her feelings and true identity with drugs and sex. She is a representation of teenage girls who grow up too fast.      The first male character that gets introduced is Jamie Fields, a 15-year-old who doesn’t know how to be himself. He follows the crowd and doesn’t really know how to think on his own. He gets angry at his mother for having Julie and Abbie help raise him because it makes him feel as if she didn’t want to deal with him anymore. His feelings take over and he impulsively goes to Los Angeles with his friends. He later starts to accept it and begins to learn feminism from Abbie and heartbreak from Julie. Jamie’s character represents all the teenage boys trying to figure out their place in the world.       Another male character is William, who is around Dorothea’s age and lives with her, Jamie, and Abbie. His character is mostly described as a womanizer. He doesn’t really know how to act around women, so he agrees to get help from Dorothea. In the film, William was supposed to be like a father-figure for Jamie, but they have absolutely nothing in common. Which is why his mother insists on the women to help raise him. But other than that, William is shown to be a confused person living with women who know what they want. His personality is meant to stand out from the empowering women around him because men are usually the ones with stability. In some ways, William is sort of a reflection of Jamie if he hadn’t been raised by those three women. William represents men who don’t know what they want in life and have trouble with women. 

        At the end of 20th Century Women, the main characters lives after the film are revealed. Dorothea dates a man named Jim until she dies from lung cancer in 1999. Abbie marries a man named Dave and ends up giving birth to two boys. Julie loses contact with everyone and moves to Paris and gets married. After his mother dies, Jamie marries and has a son. Lastly, William opens a pottery store in Arizona and gets married for a year and then gets divorced. The movie helped create characters that women and men can both relate to. 20th Century Women is a film with an amazing meaning and great impact on today’s society. The characters may be from the 70s, but their situations are clear and reflected in the 2010s.