The Strawberry Statement

When me and my friends saw this movie first in the seventies, it became one of our favorite movies. It seemed to me like a glorification of youth and freedom, which I had never encountered before. This and the great music (John Lennon, Neil Young and others) helped this movie to get cult status in former East Germany.

This exuberant, irreverent, tender, glorious film is THE cinematic embodiment of the sixties. This is one of the greatest films ever made. The camera work sparkles. Plot becomes almost irrelevant. This movie invented music video. It is much more than a movie about this or that. It is a celebration of life, youth, craziness, dreams. It leaves you yearning for life, and makes everything look beautiful. Watch this film to see how limited and timid most films are. What a breath of fresh air!!!!!

Simon (Bruce Davison) is an apolitical college rower in San Francisco. He is indifferent to the mounting protest on campus about stealing an African-American playground for the ROTC headquarter. He drops by to watch the protest and is taken with Linda (Kim Darby). He follows her into a student takeover of the administration building.

This is a counter-culture film or a counter-counter-culture film. It could be a simple straight stiff turns hippie radical. It does take some unexpected turns. He's not a simple nice guy. There are darker edges. The couple has a difficult encounter with the very black people that they're trying to help. It's not all flower power. I don't buy the shopkeeper. His actions don't feel right. It would be so much better for him to placate and cooperate with the couple before calling the cops. Instead, he's raising his hands which make it less shocking to have him call for the cops. Anyways, it all struck me wrong. There are a couple of notable actors but mostly it looks like an amateur cast. Kim Darby is cute coming a year after True Grit. It all adds up to a lesser, interesting counter-culture film.

Sorry, but it did. I read the book first, which was absolutely priceless. It was the journal of James Simon Kunen (called Simon in the movie), who was a jock at Columbia when the student uprising got started, and half-heartedly joined the protestors, mostly because the squares weren't meeting his needs. He had a wonderfully cynical, pessimistic attitude.

So what do they do for the movie? First they change the setting to San Francisco! Why? Then they make his character into a complete wimp; I cringed at almost every line. And they add all this gratuitous violence, despite the fact that there was almost no violence in the real-life uprising. What struck me about the book/journal was how disorganized everyone was. The protestors didn't have a clear plan. Some of the Columbia students opposed the protestors, and *they* didn't have a clear plan. The cops were powerless to do much of anything to the protestors except occasionally put handcuffs on them and herd them around, and the administration flipped back and forth constantly between trying to compromise with the students and threatening to expel everyone. What I got out of it was that revolution sounds like a great idea, until you get into the dean's office and realize that you don't know what to do, besides pose for a photo in his leather chair while holding a joint.

But that doesn't sell tickets. So they have a big, loud riot scene, ending with a totally campy freeze frame. (I was waiting for Bruce Davison to die in that manner when I saw him in X-Men! No such luck.)

I've grown older, I've grown sedated - this was the first time in I don't remember how long that a movie really made me FEEL so much. The music, the camera-work, the speeches, the feeling of just wanting to c h a n g e so much! I got completely wrapped up in it, especially, like someone else wrote, since the state of the world is at it is today; it makes this movie feel more accurate than ever! Why, oh why, aren't there revolutionaries like these on the streets and in the universities of today? One thing though. The movie very accurately portrays women of this time and this movement, and by that I mean they are portrayed either as sexual objects, passive jewelry for the revolutionaries (men) to lean on in their "headquarter" (in this case the dean's office)or as frail and beautiful little birds the men have to care for. It is true that this is how women of the movement were treated - as someone who could make coffee whilst the men drew up revolutionary plans of how to overthrow the government - that is until women fought back and started their own revolution. I just wish that when revolution comes next time, there will be no sexism in its lines...