The Forty-Year-Old Version

The ques­tion of who gets to tell Black sto­ries and who decides how they are told has been a con­stant chal­lenge for Black artists. These are just a few con­cerns grap­pled with in The Forty-Year-Old Ver­sion as we fol­low a strug­gling play­wright who redis­cov­ers her cre­ativ­i­ty on the eve of a mile­stone birth­day. Writ­ten, direct­ed and star­ring Rad­ha Blank, this semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal tale offers a live­ly explo­ration of art and self-fulfilment.

Once an up-and-com­er, spot­light­ed with an acclaimed ​‘30 under 30’ play­writ­ing prize, Rad­ha (Blank) is push­ing 40 and teach­es dra­mat­ic writ­ing to inner-city kids who remind her of her has-been sta­tus. With the sup­port of her best friend and agent, Archie (Peter Kim), Rad­ha is deter­mined to secure a region­al pro­duc­tion for her new play.

This pur­suit forces her to nav­i­gate the dis­tinct­ly white world of the­atre, where New York’s met­ro­pol­i­tan elite, rather than entire­ly shut­ting out Black sto­ries as they had done for decades past, run towards them, but with a cheer­ful­ly sin­is­ter pref­er­ence for tales of Black pain and trauma.

Frus­trat­ed by her play about gen­tri­fi­ca­tion being labelled ​‘inau­then­tic’, Rad­ha begins to rap her truth. Aching joints, spot­ty peri­ods and fur­ther hall­marks of mid­dle age pep­per her pas­sioned freestyle. This moment of clar­i­ty sets her on a path of forg­ing a new sense of self as Rad­haMUS Prime. Hip hop doesn’t require her to make the cre­ative sac­ri­fices she is hav­ing to make in order to have her play debut on Broadway.

Blank is in her ele­ment when fash­ion­ing the satir­i­cal noose for lib­er­als to white­s­plain their way into as they fawn over Black sto­ries with all the ​‘I‑would-have-vot­ed-for-Oba­ma-a-third-time-if-I-could’ ener­gy of the Armitages’ in Get Out. Yet rather than tak­ing over the bod­ies of Black peo­ple, these white peo­ple co-opt their sto­ries. With well-mean­ing white women tak­ing a par­tic­u­lar satir­i­cal skew­er­ing, some scenes are so hilar­i­ous it’s a won­der the actors them­selves were able to utter their lines on soy milk’s intri­cate con­nec­tion to life’s pur­pose while main­tain­ing a straight face.

Blank also excels when telling the sto­ry of New York. The roam­ing shots of Brook­lyn and Harlem, almost entire­ly shot in black-and-white, are rem­i­nis­cent of Spike Lee’s career-launch­ing She’s Got­ta Have it. Blank served as a writer on Netflix’s 2017 series adap­ta­tion of the film and it’s clear she shares Lee’s nos­tal­gia for the New York of old. The boom bap of ear­ly ​’90s hip hop under­scores Radha’s New York as the sound­track of her search for self.

Expert­ly sprin­kled vignettes involv­ing dif­fer­ent mem­bers of her neigh­bour­hood cap­ture these char­ac­ters air­ing their unso­licit­ed opin­ions about Radha’s predica­ment while also act­ing as an impor­tant reminder of com­mu­ni­ty. Each ele­ment serves to illus­trate New York as it exists, in the voic­es of its res­i­dents, despite tak­ing place in an envi­ron­ment where true authen­tic­i­ty and diverse voic­es are often sti­fled and overpowered.

Even with a few pac­ing issues, and some sub­plots that are slight­ly under­cooked, The Forty-Year-Old Ver­sion is an enjoy­ably heart­felt film about the artist’s strug­gle. Suit­ably sharp when it needs to be, its dis­cus­sion around the right to tell sto­ries is woe­ful­ly under­served in main­stream Hol­ly­wood – as are roles for plus-size Black female pro­tag­o­nists over 40. Blank’s direc­to­r­i­al debut is a tri­umph and should excite any­one who believes the best in life is yet to come.