united states, 1968, englishI’m not a fan of this one. It’s a mess, and without much to hold my interest.
ROBERT DOWNEY SR.
No More Excuses
I often don’t really enjoy countercultural films of the late sixties. That’s somewhat surprising to me, as I enjoy a lot of the music from the same period. The cultural influences that created the music are presumably the same ones that created the movies, but for whatever reason one usually works for me and the other usually doesn’t.
The best I can explain it is that there’s something both cynical and naive about these films, and the combination feels boorish and unpleasant. They are so sure they’re tearing apart all of the barriers of a bourgeoisie society, while at the same time really just acting like annoying teenagers.
The Robert Downey Sr. of this film is essentially the archetype of what I’m talking about. This is a stupid film. It weirdly and pointlessly intermixes the story of a Civil War soldier caught out of time with a Chronicle of a Summer, Place de la République style on-the-street interview sequence. It features a man raping a woman and her suddenly being completely on board with the whole event, because of his display of toxic masculinity.
The interview questions are insulting and sex obsessed. The idea of singles culture as a solution for anything is now hopelessly out of date. There’s really nothing here that I particularly enjoyed.