The Twentieth Century
- surreal
- signature
- funny
Neutral, steady, measured comedy / drama, surreal in texture. Ambivalent, intimate, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.
How every film is hand-scored →Toronto, Canada, 1899. William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874-1950) fervently believes that he is destined to become Prime Minister, but to do so he will first have to fight his personal obsessions and overcome the many obstacles he will encounter on his tortuous path to power.
Our read · The Twentieth Century (2019) reads as a neutral, steady, surreal comedy · drama · history entry — measured in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook, with a strong directorial signature. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.
Availability in the US · via JustWatch
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The shape of The Twentieth Century
What watching it is actually like.
“You want surreal Canadian black comedy satirizing political ambition and national myth-making.”
Skip it tonight — Weird absurdist historical satire or Canadian deadpan doesn't appeal tonight.
The reading.
Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.
Eight films that read most like this one.
Closeness in the twelve-axis space — how the film actually reads, not “people also liked.”
Discussion
What does your Movie DNA look like?
Rate a few films you've seen. We map your taste across the same twelve axes and find the films you'll actually want to watch tonight.
Calibrate yourself