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The world of Rebel Without a Cause is one full of dead ends. Society seems to reject tradition and progress alike, creating a confusion that torments the film’s youth and pushes them toward mutiny. A time capsule of crumbling ideals, Rebel captures the emergence of a new generation actively discontent with postwar America. In its meditations on love, family and honor, the film explores whether it is intuition or ignorance that is the source of young people’s power—encapsulated by James Dean’s profoundly sensitive performance as Jim Stark. Predating the idealism of the hippie movement, Jim, Judy and the aptly nicknamed Plato are forced to envision a better world, simply because of their compassion for one another. As in the Platonic dialogues, perhaps it is beauty that inspires this love which will set them free—the beauty of their youth, their wisdom and of life itself. The audience glimpses this beauty briefly through the film’s vivid colors and sweeping CinemaScope images of Los Angeles that elevate Jim’s first day of school to a cosmic melodrama, immortalizing he and his friends in the eternal struggle of frustrated youth.

Wiseman is one of cinema’s greatest writers to have never penned a script. Much of his authorship is at the editing table, and his sophomore documentary High School contains some of the most fascinating characters in his oeuvre. Made from five weeks’ worth of footage captured at Northeast High School in Philadelphia, Wiseman closely follows the relationships between teacher, parent and child to examine how human beings accept or challenge their social responsibilities. Most of the tone-deaf faculty use their power to subjugate rather than educate, and many students act out mindlessly, simply regurgitating observed behavior. There are a few examples of care, such as a young English teacher trying to reach through their blank expressions with the poetics of Simon and Garfunkel. At that fleeting age, unbearable to endure but coveted in misty-eyed retrospection, everything seems to be equally dire—be it a detention slip, a simulated space mission, or a club discussing the injustice of the Vietnam War. Northeast High and, as suggested by Wiseman’s vague title, the American public school system at large, stand as microcosms containing the breadth of modern civilization, a charade of adult life that feels real until you toss your graduation cap into the air and wake up.