Medium Cool is one of those hippie-dippie time capsule pictures that was probably dated by the time they released it. Now it's mostly laughable to watch as an attempt at art; it barely passes as memorabilia. The film was written and directed by cinematographer Haskell Wexler, so the emphasis, understandably, is on the look of the film, the images, and which is why the story and character development are so sadly lacking.
The film centers around a local Chicago cameraman (Robert Forster) and his travails in and around the high-tension scene around the time of the 1968 Democratic Convention, but the general theme that dominates the movie (yes, friends, it's a crusty old message movie) is the way the media controls our lives by controlling what we see and how we see it. Wexler presents this in a variety of ways, none particularly successful. The TV station's assignment editor is shown nixing a proposed feature on inner city suffering in favor of, among other things, baseball, and news events are depicted as staged. When Forster goes into a rant at his white trash girlfriend (Verna Bloom) about media tyranny (the big message scene which is, naturally, the low point of the film), one wonders if she has any idea what the hell he's talking about. A sequence where Forster is hassled in a black neighborhood is riveting, then that devolves into a message scene.
But where the movie fails is that IT looks staged when it's trying to be authentic. We see Verna Bloom's character tiptoeing behind a police barricade looking for her runaway son (by the way, is a political riot normally where a 13-year-old goes for kicks?), but the introduction of a paid actor into what is essentially news footage undercuts the seriousness of what Wexler is trying to sell. The opposite effect takes place, which is that the demonstration takes on the feel of staged drama; the documentary feel is lost. In another scene, two non-actors are heard shouting "Remember Prague" and "Don't forget Budapest" and it has all the legitimacy of a second-grade nature pageant; it was obviously looped on to the soundtrack in post-production. Wexler mixes true convention footage with drama and the hybrid stuff, and it doesn't really work on any level. I commend Wexler on the general look of the picture, it radiates the color of the times while mostly avoiding psychedelia: a shot of a father and son in a wheatfield is terrific, as are the shots of Verna Bloom searching for her son under the city lights, which are spectacular. The editing is curt and keeps the picture moving.
At the end, when Forster and Bloom have the auto accident, Wexler's camera pans over to a shot of another camera filming the wreckage. I guess Wexler's message is that they were just pawns in the game. But they're pawns in the movie too, and when they wipe out, we don't much care, since they were just implements for Wexler to put across his commentary on the state of things. Watching a young Robert Forster, I couldn't help but think how much I enjoyed him as the bail-bondsman in Jackie Brown. Now THERE'S a movie I recommend. With this, you take your chances. 2 ** out of 4
The film centers around a local Chicago cameraman (Robert Forster) and his travails in and around the high-tension scene around the time of the 1968 Democratic Convention, but the general theme that dominates the movie (yes, friends, it's a crusty old message movie) is the way the media controls our lives by controlling what we see and how we see it. Wexler presents this in a variety of ways, none particularly successful. The TV station's assignment editor is shown nixing a proposed feature on inner city suffering in favor of, among other things, baseball, and news events are depicted as staged. When Forster goes into a rant at his white trash girlfriend (Verna Bloom) about media tyranny (the big message scene which is, naturally, the low point of the film), one wonders if she has any idea what the hell he's talking about. A sequence where Forster is hassled in a black neighborhood is riveting, then that devolves into a message scene.
But where the movie fails is that IT looks staged when it's trying to be authentic. We see Verna Bloom's character tiptoeing behind a police barricade looking for her runaway son (by the way, is a political riot normally where a 13-year-old goes for kicks?), but the introduction of a paid actor into what is essentially news footage undercuts the seriousness of what Wexler is trying to sell. The opposite effect takes place, which is that the demonstration takes on the feel of staged drama; the documentary feel is lost. In another scene, two non-actors are heard shouting "Remember Prague" and "Don't forget Budapest" and it has all the legitimacy of a second-grade nature pageant; it was obviously looped on to the soundtrack in post-production. Wexler mixes true convention footage with drama and the hybrid stuff, and it doesn't really work on any level. I commend Wexler on the general look of the picture, it radiates the color of the times while mostly avoiding psychedelia: a shot of a father and son in a wheatfield is terrific, as are the shots of Verna Bloom searching for her son under the city lights, which are spectacular. The editing is curt and keeps the picture moving.
At the end, when Forster and Bloom have the auto accident, Wexler's camera pans over to a shot of another camera filming the wreckage. I guess Wexler's message is that they were just pawns in the game. But they're pawns in the movie too, and when they wipe out, we don't much care, since they were just implements for Wexler to put across his commentary on the state of things. Watching a young Robert Forster, I couldn't help but think how much I enjoyed him as the bail-bondsman in Jackie Brown. Now THERE'S a movie I recommend. With this, you take your chances. 2 ** out of 4