The Strawberry Statement

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...

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.)

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 movie will be of interest to anyone curious about the mores, attitudes, fashions, and lifestyles of the those involved in the radical student movement of the late 1960s. It presents a compelling portrait of the times. Personally I was left with the impression that the students were largely naive, spoiled idiots, and I found it difficult to sympathize with their agenda and methods. Nevertheless, I did feel for the duration of the movie that I was immersed in a reasonable, realistic representation of those times. The movie presents a more reality-based view of the late 60s than hippy freakout pieces like "Easy rider," for example, so you the viewer is advised to look at it as a kind of window into an era gone by.

Bruce Davison, Kim Darby, Bob Balaban, Bud Cort, that guy who looks like Bud Cort. They're all here along with some great music from Neil Young and others. The finale is powerful but some of the earlier stuff tries too hard to be trippy. The script is pretentious as well.