THE STRAWBERRY STATEMENT (1970)

At an unnamed university in San Francisco, we see the crew team rowing through a river in the early dawn. Crew seems to be the first priority of Simon (Bruce Davison), a young, preppyish student who is ignoring the current campus unrest. A large group of politicized students has occupied the administration building protesting the university's purchase of an inner-city playground as a place to house the ROTC (a military training program which became controversial during the Vietnam era). Soon, however, as classes are shut down and police become omnipresent, Simon sneaks his way into the occupied building and seems to become radicalized; he remains a sit-in occupant and volunteers to make secret grocery store runs to keep the students fed. But his motives are not ideologically pure--he stays largely because he has become smitten with fellow occupier Linda (Kim Darby), who is truly devoted to the student cause. He also manages to make time most mornings to get to crew practice where he deals with two friends: Elliot (Bud Cort), a gentle but non-political sort, and George (Murray MacLeod), a tough-guy conservative who punches Simon in the face for his politics but who eventually, along with Elliot, joins the occupation, for reasons not made clear. When George takes his activist turn, he is beaten up as nearby cops ignore him, and he winds up in the hospital with a broken leg. This more than anything else seems to cement Simon's commitment to the protest, and the film climaxes with a confrontation between a mob of students occupying a gym while chanting "Give Peace a Chance" and armed police and National Guard called in by the university president.

This is one of the last of the Hollywood movies that tried to be socially conscious, when Hollywood thought that being relevant would lead to big box office like Easy Rider did and so many others after that didn't. This had the bad luck to be released just weeks after the Kent State shootings; audiences weren't interested in reliving that as entertainment and the film was not a hit, critically or commercially, despite having a soundtrack that includes Buffy St. Marie's version of Joni Mitchell’s "The Circle Game," Neil Young's "Helpless," Graham Nash's "Our House," and Thunderclap Newman's "Something in the Air" which became a top 40 hit after exposure in the movie. (Because this was made by MGM, the only album covers we see in the movie are the soundtrack LPs for Dr. Zhivago and 2001.) One problem is that the characters are undeveloped--despite the fact that Simon is in every scene in the movie, we never get a handle on his background or his personality. Even when he seems committed to the protest, we get the sense that he's still just living out a fantasy of being popular. When George punches him out, leading to a bloody lip, he tells the occupiers that he was a victim of police brutality. He imagines himself in front of the crowds, giving heartfelt and inspiring speeches, but when he does finally express himself, it's in an incoherent rant calling everything "bullshit!" Davison holds the center well enough, though his character is so passive, it's difficult to identify with him too strongly. Darby is fine but she is given little to do--a problem with many female characters in counterculture films of the era. I particularly like MacLeod as George; he's charming enough to pull off the unmotivated switch in the character's politics. Bob Balaban and James Coco have small roles, and Jeannie Berlin, the daughter of Elaine May, has one scene early on as "Girl with Clipboard"; she looks and sounds just like her mother. 

The visual style dates the movie almost as much as the material, with lots of fast, choppy edits and unusual camera angles. It's OK in the beginning but gets overworked. An initial student protest at the playground is played for slapstick laughs--when they are all hauled down to the police station and put against the wall, Simon tries to fight back, only to be told by a weary cop, "Please, we've got a busy day. Up against the wall." But the climactic demonstration is shot realistically, to the point where it feels like it must have been filmed at a real confrontation (though it was not), and gives the movie a satisfying, if ambiguous, ending. This was based on a nonfiction book about a real campus uprising at Columbia, and the title comes from a statement by a Columbia dean, dismissing student concerns about university issues by saying, "Whether students vote 'yes''or 'no' on an issue is like telling me they like strawberries." Pictured are Cort, Davison and Darby. [TCM]