Reviews

I first saw this film on HBO in, I guess, 1981, and it has always stayed with me. I didn't see it again until this week (I'm writing this in late August 2016) and found that it holds up very well. If the filmmakers were aiming to preserve a snapshot of turbulent campus life circa 1970, I think they pulled it off. Those were my times, too, and I was there and I saw this as it was going on. I think this film may have been the first feature to address the era as historical -- as opposed to, say, The Strawberry Statement, a film with many of the same themes as this one, but which was made in 1970.

In the wraparound, in "the present," it's been about ten years since Jessie and Nick finished college. I guess my only disagreement with the film is that, given the split between Nick and Jessie after Leo's death -- she's not even aware that Nick returned to Boston, went to Harvard Med and became a psychiatrist -- there's a possibility at the end that they'll get back together. That's a nice ending, but I don't think it reflects real life. In real life, Jessie's cab pulls away, Nick doesn't run after it, and one never phones the other, ever. They are different people now.

It also struck me that, here in 2016, it's been almost 50 years since Nick, Leo and Jessie first arrived on campus, and I suddenly felt pretty old when I realized that. Those days are now about as far in the past as the First World War was to the college kids of 1970 -- which is to say, pretty darn far back.

(Okay, okay. Maybe Nick and Jessie did get back together. I'd like to think so, anyway.)