Wander through the English countryside with two teens trying to make sense of the world

This excerpt from the documentary The Long Journey (1964) follows two English teenage girls as they wander, smoke cigarettes and provide stream-of-consciousness insights into their inner lives and the world around them. In a voice-over, one of the girls, seemingly a quasi-runaway, discusses her desire to live a free, non-conforming life far from the routines of school and church, before meeting a friend and commenting on the drab hues and peculiar beauty of the industrialised countryside. In every instance, the two seem to be seeking to understand their place in the world and what it means to live a free, authentic life. Pivoting between a melancholic view of their surroundings and carpe diem sentiments, they offer contradictions in earnest as, like young people coming of age in any generation, they navigate their own conflicting impulses and grapple with the question of how best to exist in the world.