What are the women of the 1960's like now and how were their lives affected by their experience living in that decade and through the women's movement? The documentary answers these questions by talking to a group of them individually. The fact that they were affluent and politically liberal was their common denominator in the 1960's but since then, their lives took different paths. The women interviewed, who were graduates of Skidmore College in 1969, have passed their 65th birthday and they look back on what has happened to them since then. They protested the war in Vietnam, followed politics, experienced the rock culture of the time and took part in the civil rights cause. Their education and affluence was a springboard to what we would consider highly successful lives but their main goal was to be free from the conventions that used to dictate how women should conduct their lives. Generally, they realized their ambitions, having achieved promotions, run election campaigns, received citations and awards, academic tenure and other standards of success. However, it was not without hardship, tears and the hard school of experience. Family relationships, having or not having children, workplace expectations, etc. resulted in different outcomes. There were no set formulas in their lives. They seemed to feel they had done their best although not without some regrets. They were generally modest about their accomplishments and looked forward to the last phase of their lives: learning new languages, or enjoying a new relationship, similar to many of their generation. These women seemed content with the sense that they helped to leave a better world for their children and continue to take on new challenges. Nothing particularly surprising here and no real evidence that they affected change any more than what would have happened anyway with less affluent and less educated representatives of their generation. That is my conclusion. The movie doesn't express an opinion. It leads me to think that the sixties represented "sound and fury signifying nothing" to paraphrase Shakespeare. The greatest generation wasn't the sixties but the youth of the nineteen thirties and forties who lived through depression and war and in turn gave birth to the baby boomers. The jury is largely out on the boomers, my own generation, whose self indulgence was mainly a way station to the material success they expected while congratulating themselves for the progress made in women's rights, which probably would have happened anyway.
