From Vietnam to Iraq
1969 was a turning point in American history. And this film is still living on the hippie dream, on the flower kids and their illusion that life is nothing but music and fun. Even the war and the draft are made small and insignificant, as if you could escape the draft because you had been arrested, tried and convicted of a crime like littering. Why not jaywalking? 1969 was the arrival of Nixon, the invasion of Cambodia, after the Tet offensive, escalation and blindness among all political personnel or politicians. The film thus is a full nightmare in disguise as a freewheeling period of complete enjoyment and happiness, wedding and champagne added as a reward for your trust in the future. And yet the film is a tremendous satire of that very short-sighted and careless spirit. Every detail is symbolical and metaphorical. Arlo Guthrie's girl friend looks very Vietnamese, a symbol of the war going on that no one wants to see. The church that is sold is also the symbol of the loss of faith and legitimacy in the US. Everything is just running down and away. And that is crowned at the end by this very last scene where Alice and Ray are literally abandoned by Arlo and Mari-chan, and Alice is not standing in any Wonderland then, but in her wedding dress, early in the sunless morning on the front steps of the church of hers, unmoving and silent in a world where there is a light breeze that makes her veil float slightly, both the veil and its shadow on the church wall, and Alice and the church are captured by the slowly moving camera following some circle whose center is Alice herself and every so often a tree trunk goes by in the picture, and the whole church is surrounded by a complete waste land, all dirt and no grass, brown and muddy. The church itself looks unkempt and its paint seems to be more or less starting to scale. A world abandoned and being wasted, wrecked, dumped along the way of history that is going to come, a vision we can imagine bleak and sad, tearful and fearful, frightening and full of pain. There is like some nostalgia at that time about a good old world that has vanished in thin air and will never be back. See you, bye bye, forever. That was a time when the United States, for the first time in their history, had met an obstacle they could not negotiate. And today this past vision is becoming so premonitory of the forty years it will take for hope to come back in time to be able to assume the changing world in which the US are no longer to be number one and yet when they can recapture some leadership provided they accept to share responsibilities and resources. That idea of sharing definitely was not in the air in 1969 and the dissatisfied young people could only dream of a freewheeling enjoyment of what was at their disposal without any effort of any kind. And the vice-principal of my high school was telling us in the car that took us to the Teachers' Union state convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, how a simple atom bomb on Hanoi or ,Haiphong would bring in victory. The higher the monkey climbs in the treeĀ You know the second part of the saying I guess, if not go and check in Sri Lanka, for instance, what you can see when the monkey is going up into the tree leaving you on the ground, your eyes rising slowly to follow the butt sight of the acrobatic animal.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
score 10/10
Dr_Coulardeau 10 November 2008
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1973554/35550
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