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1969Rating:
Release Date: 16 April, 2002 Retail Price: $14.98 OUR Price: $12.99 You SAVE: $1.99! Cast: Complete Cast (11 total) |
1969 Reviews
When We Were Young
Dopy yet captivating, 1969 wears its heart on its sleeve. Winona Ryder has beautiful hippie outfits. Robert Downey Jr is fascinating to watch. His character just seems like him. Because he always plays drugged-out losers whose worlds are about to collapse, his movies always seem to be his autogiography, just like the old time-stars like Lana Turner or John Wayne. Yet in this film Kiefer's the real star, and he isn't bad. With his blond, blond hair he looks very much as though he might actually have been the son of Mariette Hartley.
The anti war stuff was a little cimplified but good. Winona makes a startling speech at her high school graduation, asking the crowd why we have to go fight a war that no one in the US actually understands. Watching it today, we realize we should be asking ourselves these questions all over again. I wonder if the movie might have been more of a success today than in 1988. Ryder made this film right between BEETLEJUICE and HEATHERS, when she was still a giant star, and yet it barely saw release.
Among the elders, Bruce Dern, Mariette Hartley and Joanna Cassidy are all excellent. Joanna Cassidy isn't as lean and mean as she is on SIX FEET UNDER, she has more flesh on her, but she looks marvelous, like Claudia Cardinale playing a hippie.
There's a scene where Sutherland's VW van, decked up in hippie colors, passes a convoy of soldier boys on a lonely highway, and Ryder leans out the window and makes the peace sign at them with a beatific smile. At first the soldiers respond violently and obscenely and then, as more and more trucks are passed, the mood of the soldiers seems to shift and a few give the peace sign back. Then more and more of them. All the while on the soundtrack "Wooden Ships" is playing (the Jefferson Airplane version). Some of the scenes were touching, others a little goofy.
A Very Good 80's Film About the 60's.
I can easily recommend this movie over something like the 60's, simply because it gives a more honest portrayal of life back then as opposed to what's been offered in so many other reproductions about those turbulent times.
There is a genuine chemistry between Keifer Sutherland and Robert Downey, Jr. as they play best friends Ralph and Scott, two young 19 year-old college kids who just want to go to school, drift around, and experiment with the burgeoning counterculture. It's easy to believe they were friends as much off the screen as on, and it lends to the story's credibility.
Wynona Ryder plays Ralph's younger sister Beth, sweet, innocent, and inquisitive about the everchanging world outside the small conservative New England town the story mostly takes place in.
Ralph and Beth's mother, played very commendably by Joanna Cassidy, is an attractive, hip, drunken widow who is having an affair with Cliff, Scott's father. He's as uptight as she is loose, and as hard as Scott's mother Jesse (Mariette Hartley) is warm.
Older brother Alden is called to serve in Vietnam, and Scott self-righteously picks a fight with him about how it's not his war. One of the most touching scenes is watching Jessie shouting "don't die!" as Alden takes the bus toward his appointed duty. This also sets the pace for more anger and confrontations in two already very dysfunctional families, and the overall unrest of the changing times doesn't help matters. The movie is full of funny moments and tragedy but, mostly, you really feel like you were there as it all unfolds and a naive little town finally wakes up to the world around it.
It isn't just Scott, Ralph, and Beth who grow up in this story, but also their parents as they come to terms with both familial and relationship deaths.
I don't want to give a lot away if you haven't seen this one, but I enjoyed it immensely and couldn't recommend it enough. There's also a great soundtrack to accompany this superb movie that's as full of atmosphere as it is stellar actors. It will both make you laugh and think quite a bit. Don't wait a minute longer to experience the year and the movie 1969.
More Customer Reviews (7 total)
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