Medium Cool

Before this article I would like to give credit to Roger Ebert for turning me onto this movie in his review of Battle for Seattle.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080925/REVIEWS/809250301

This is a cool movie. By the way November Movie Month mooniker has been changed to Cool movies, and will make an appearance every so often on the 365, even after November.

So anyway, Medium Cool (1969) is a movie directed by Haskell Wexler. It stars Robert Forster playing against type as John Cassellis, a news cameraman who is on the trail of a potentially hot lead that involves several members of a somewhat militant black protest group. That is until he is pulled off the case. But his story is just one of many many many; he is merely the vehicle that we see these other people thru.

This sounds cool already right? Well what makes this movie Blog worthy are a couple of things. Namely the method Wexler employed in making it: he used a mixture of real and staged footage of riots, protests, concerts, rallies, and other goings on and plunged his actors in there. The real 1968 Democratic primary in Chicago has Robert Forster wandering around with a camera. Or is it staged and he is cut into the real footage. This sequence is done so well that it feels seamless. Real protest footage, real demonstrations, real people, real interviews, so are they fake characters?

This was a question that the film seemed to be asking. While all the scenes are scripted and acted out, they are placed at the backdrop of actual goings on. Footage of police coralling and subdueing demonstators, actual audio of Robert Kennedy's last speech before he went into the kitchen (done in a 360 pan of a kitchen prior to his arrival and ends a frame after the door bursts open.). The characters at this point have as much worth as the ones in the real footage. And they're shot in such a way that it doesnt feel like we are following a logical plot structure but rather hitting upon them at odd and telling emotional moments.

What to make of the Robert Forster scene in his bedroom, post-coital with his attractive nurse girlfriend. They sit and talk about petty little things, admire his new fiber optics, and then have a playful romp around his spacious loft before doing the nasty, then accidently releasing a dove.

This doesnt read as hectic as its shot, but I benefit from more than one viewing and extensive reading on this movie. Many of the scenes also benefit from this. Not to say that my initial viewing wasn't interesting.

This movie is everywhere at all times and place, covering people and their smallest of moments. Then backing out and plunging those people and their moments into the tumultous world and watch them get chewed up.

I will stop there. This is a very intelligent and well designed movie about how we view the world and how that person on the screen is a real living person with fears and pains and ambitions just like you. The ending is a true litmus test of your numbness. Fuck Funny Games.

Here is the opening 10 minutes. It perfectly illustrates what to expect. Love the motorcycle POV

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KruPX4UXf2o

By the way there is a guy named Studs Terkel who is credited as their man in Chicago. Badass points for both his name and the fact he is "Their man in Chicago". I want to someone's man in a city... wow that came out quite gay.