October 21, 2024

I watched much of this convinced that Treat Williams was a very young Tommy Lee Jones, and despite the look of the film dating, it's still quite a potent and entertaining look at life amidst the draft. The rather naive "Claude" (John Savage) arrives from his home in rural Oklahoma into a New York brimming with vibrancy and eccentricity. He's on his way to join up to fight in Vietnam when he encounters "Berger" (Williams) and starts to fall into a… read the rest.

I watched much of this convinced that Treat Williams was a very young Tommy Lee Jones, and despite the look of the film dating, it's still quite a potent and entertaining look at life amidst the draft. The rather naive "Claude" (John Savage) arrives from his home in rural Oklahoma into a New York brimming with vibrancy and eccentricity. He's on his way to join up to fight in Vietnam when he encounters "Berger" (Williams) and starts to fall into a life of gentle hedonism leading to his love of "Shiela" (Beverly D'Angelo). She and "Berger are from different sides of the tracks, but despite her silver spoon she has quite a rebellious nature and very much embraces her hippie existence protesting the war whilst stoked up on weed, emotion and idealism. They only have a few days, but in those days their relationships develop, thrive, vacillate and ultimately Milos Forman presents us with a quite subtly scathing commentary on a mid-1960s USA. I still think this works better on the stage - the confined space there forces the characters and scenarios together better, but this is still a strong big-screen adaptation that allows the music and dance numbers to retain much of their punch. The characterisations run deep too with plenty of their gang having slightly more than bit parts to complement the thrust of the burgeoning romance. It's perhaps that that lets this down a little. The pair are rarely seen together and the portrayal of their "love" is a wee bit on the shallow side. Musically, there are more than a few familiar numbers to keep the pace rollicking along, and perhaps the fairly explicit nature of some of the lyrics explains why this did rather better on the European Awards circuit than it did in the USA (or the UK). "Aquarius", "Good Morning Starshine" and the title song are maybe the most memorable but there are plenty more to get our teeth into as the rawness of the original Gerome Ragni book is framed within a cityscape dealing with racism, homophobia and just about everything to preclude the concept of "free love" (or even creatively inexpensive love). It's holding it's relevance quite well and is well worth two hours.

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