A Small Circle of Friends

True classic bringing our college life in the 60's to the screen, nostalgic and accurate, and deeply appreciated. I know of no other film which makes it possible for the x-generation to get a glimpse of how we baby boomers emerged.

This film follows the lives of three friends (Davis, Allen, and Parker) as they attend Harvard in the 1960's. They meet, bond, fall in and out of love, and challenge the system during the time of social upheaval and student unrest. Their friendship is complicated when a love triangle develops, and it takes a senseless tragedy to bring them crashing back down to earth.

Like many films set in this era, most key events, from LBJ refusing to seek a second term to the rise of the far left terrorist groups, are seen through the eyes of the main characters. But unlike films like 'Forrest Gump,' the historical references feel more organic to the film, and not just points on a timeline.

The three leads are very good as well. Through the various ups and downs in their friendships and the world around them, Brad Davis, Karen Allen and Jameson Parker manage to communicate the changes their characters go through over the two decades this film spans. Even though some of the film borders on melodrama, there are enough interesting sections of the film that keep it from becoming trite.

But what I liked most about this film was that it doesn't romanticize the counter-culture. It shows the flaws in the idealism and that not everyone who was against the war was an enlightened peace loving flower child. But it also shows the good things. Like the sense of community, protest through art, and an embracing of love over violence. 'A Small Circle of Friends' manages to show that the hippies were individuals making their own choices and dealing with the consequences, and not some giant smelly organism that shared a collective consciousness.

I was in school then. This is the only movie ever made that got it right. 30 feet a part would be kids who were fighting the war and kids who wanted no part of it. Transformations from innocence to dissident happened overnight. Karen Allen is the best actress ever and why the hell isn't she working every day? This came out in 1980 and I thought there would be many more like this but nope---just this one.

It was a sweet time and every time I visit campus today, it's like a graveyard. Dull, calm, sane. I miss the charge that was in the air the 4 years I was in college, it's not there. Neither is the ambient sound track. Now everyone has speakers in their ears, not their dorm windows!

In spite of the new (2005) terrible film STEALTH directed by the same director of this film....

I give this film TWO THUMBS UP.

This movie rang a bell during the military draft lottery scene; my number was 316, NOT ELIGIBLE for military service. A guy I knew then got #1: Sept 14.

The very last scene is great when two good old friends find themselves years after college, each with a profession and one with a divorce already under her belt and they decide to "see what happens" now.

Very rational and smart decision.

The most resonant element of director Rob Cohen's film is the music score by Jim Steinman, which includes the melody that was later recorded as Total Eclipse of the Heart. Otherwise this tale of a supposed menage-a-tois between Harvard university students Brad Davis, Karen Allen and Jameson Parker is as dramatic as the cartoon opening and closing sketches. The screenplay by Ezra Sacks attempts coverage of the Vietnam era from 1967 to 1971 from a student activist point of view, but the tri-romance hardly seems from the same era since it isn't until towards the end that there is any suggestion of bigamy. There is also even less suggestion of homosexuality interest between Davis and Parker. When the 3 finally go into the same bedroom, the camera is left outside and the door closed. Their lack of involvement in activism is paralled with the radicalisation of a Texan boy scout who comes to Harvard at the same time and ends up a terrorist, and highlighted by a campus riot that comes out of nowhere. Even the Vietnam connection as a comment on the relationship and vice versa doesn't work. Sacks opens with Parker reuniting with Allen in "the present"before we start flashbacking to 1967, with Davis' absence pre-empting the outcome, and Cohen supplies matching love scene montages. Davis' has steam so apparently is more erotic and ends abruptly, whilst Parker's is set to Chances Are and ends more positively. Sacks has 2 lines I liked - a technique of breaking into a glass window "I saw it on I Spy or was it The Untouchables", though Cohen repeats it, and "Only men would come up with a draft lottery using balls". Utilising period TV and photographic images - the assassinations of the Kennedy's and Martin Luther King - and a series of bad wigs, the only sense of reality and truth comes in a moment when someone sings the Star Spangled Banner to TV closure. Davis has the impossible charming/wild man role, not helped by his looking older than the others, and the best he can do is stare child-like for vulnerability. Allen doesn't have a strong screen persona so it's easy to think one is watching Amy Irving or Janet Margolin or Brooke Adams. Of the 3, Parker probably comes off best even when saddled with a Colonel Sanders look. His character's basic dullness is probably the reason he needs to be reunited with Allen. Even when the competition is Davis, anyone that prefers to experiment with rats rather than go to an Ingmar Bergman film is definitely worth reconsidering as a partner. Watch for Shelley Long as a photographer, and Daniel Stern, billed as Dan.