To me, this movie is perfection.

Great Film overall

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

This unusual film combines fictional narrative with live footage of the turbulent 1968 Democratic convention.The movie made a splash upon first release. At the time, it couldn't have been more topical for the explosive political events then taking place. Director Wexler had his camera fortuitously placed to catch the bloody clash between protesters and Chicago cops backed up by the National Guard at the 1968 Democratic convention. Wexler caught the afternoon clash in the park, but not the probably unfilmable bloodier riot of that evening. Nonetheless, it's near documentary footage of an historic event that remains the movie's chief attraction.The movie itself is non-linear, with little narrative or dialogue. Instead it fades in and out on reporter Cassellis (Forster) as he learns some ugly truths about the state of the nation, circa- 1968. His and cameraman Gus's (Bonerz's) run-in with the black radicals in a Chicago ghetto remains a haunting slice of angry cinema and appears, to me at least, to be largely unscripted. I expect it was the first personal exposure many white audiences had to black rage then bubbling up in urban centers. This angry encounter, combining with raucous anti- war protesters and paramilitary police, present a vivid profile of the civil unrest of the time-- (Oddly, however, I don't believe the word 'Vietnam' is uttered once in the dialogue).We also get a sense of dislocation through the characters of Eileen (Bloom) and small son Harold (Blankenship). Uprooted from their West Virginia home by an absentee father, Eileen now ekes out a living in Chicago, while Harold tries to adjust to city ways. Their rural background and accents mark them as hillbillies in their new surroundings. Nonetheless, the sophisticated Cassellis finds Eileen's naïve simplicity appealing, and their little tour of the psychedelic nightclub reveals something of the urban counterculture flourishing at the time.I get the feeling Wexler wasn't sure how to end the quasi-narrative part of the movie, and there, I believe, he stumbles by settling for a clear contrivance. Nonetheless, the movie's last shot of his turning the camera onto us suggests we too are part of the story, which seems fitting for a film of this innovative sort. Anyway, the movie remains a one-of-a-kind, and though no longer topical, does furnish a fascinating glimpse of a turbulent time, which in many ways is still with us.

MEDIUM COOL is one of the most terrifying films ever made.The photography is beautiful, set up by the man who would one day be responsible for the inimitable DAYS OF HEAVEN. The result is visceral. It seems so incredibly "real."But MEDIUM COOL occupies this bizarre, hollow land on the spectrum of cinematic "realism." Realism is an abstraction. Never attainable and, at least in cinema, never wanted. By nature, movies present a clearly fictionalized atmosphere where events, people, and influences from reality are inserted. MEDIUM COOL inverts that system by inserting fictional characters into situations constructed from genuine human anger and fear. As far as cinematic innovation goes, this may be the most dangerous.Wexler is fabricating reality. Our culture is so full of corporations, politicians, and interests trying to construct their own portrait of reality. The movies might be the most famous example of this abstraction. However, MEDIUM COOL's danger exists in its presentation. Wexler was a genius. How he thought he could get away with this film I will never know. He inserts Eileen into the climactic riot, helplessly walking against the tide of police officers, clueless about the issues and only concerned with finding her son. His confidence in such direction points to the horrifying fact that he also believes that history is a malleable material. By inserting a fabrication, a symbol, into tangible human danger, Wexler argues for his ability to alter history. That delusion wouldn't be so dangerous if the material were not presented as a veritable document of late-1960's violence and ethics. The counterargument asserting that all cinema is presented such only strengthens this point -- if all films possess the trappings of realism, MEDIUM COOL attempts to create one anew. Ultimately, the moral argument is murky and Wexler's left-wing fortitude is made silly by the bookending car-wreck. The film turns out to be a self-indulgent autobiography on Wexler, himself. He doesn't try to hide his Godardian influence, but it becomes trite and facile with the final hijacking of LE MEPRIS. His obsession with the power of the camera eventually usurps fringe cultural concerns like Racism, Violence, Political Upheaval, and Feminism. They're all there in MEDIUM COOL, but in the end they only exist because of the camera.Much scholarship is made about Cassellis' responsibility as the hero. So many admire his calm inversion of stereotype. He is the archetypal revolutionary hero. Unmoved and unshaken in the face of tragedy (the opening, for example), he is depicted as someone who lives for the camera. As footage of MLK is shown (who was shot that year), he says "Jesus, I love shooting film." Cassellis is Wexler -- a grounded permutation of "heroic" behavior. But with plenty of faults to balance everything out.Maybe the most interesting question is -- why Wexler? why 1968? why distort filmic tradition now? The answer might be revealed when Wexler films a series of Black adults in the ghetto. They make (somewhat garbled) pleas for Cassellis to get in touch with the "real people." What was the late-60's revolution but a demand for individual attention and the premature glorification of youth? In MEDIUM COOL, Wexler makes an impossible attempt to faithfully represent the little man. This brings us back to the terrifying message of the film.All of this is not to say that MEDIUM COOL doesn't have brilliant sequences. If Wexler wandered around with a camera for a year, I would be fixated. The opening scenes at the security base, the final riot prelude (whenever Eileen was absent), and most scenes with Harold are perfect instructions for cinematic suggestions of reality. The pictures are colorful, focused, and energetic and most of the acting is realized successfully. Indeed, as long as the audience has the capacity to understand the fabrication they are seeing, the photography does enough to resurrect the broken ideology into a formal revolution in itself.MEDIUM COOL is a unique study in cinematic representation. Many passages render and preserve a critical cultural paradigm. One only wishes that Wexler might have actually filmed the events without feeling the need to dress them up.53.7

Still-relevant and thought-provoking essay on violence--and the voyeurism of violence via television--in America circa 1968. Docudrama-styled film centers on a TV-news cameraman in Chicago (Robert Forster, lean and mean while resembling a young Charles Bronson) and his love/hate relationship with his work, which is constantly being undermined by bureaucratic decision-making from network suits who aren't on the front-lines. Cinematographer Haskell Wexler also produced, directed, and wrote this microcosm of race relations (and its mind-boggling double-talk), youthful protesters of government, and clashes between civilians and the armed forces--all occurring during the 1968 Democratic convention rallies. Despite a tough, cynical veneer, a trace of bitter-tinged humor manages to come through in Wexler's conception, though the picture runs too long and is saddled with a bummer climax determined to make a statement. Forster is charming in a moodily low key, yet his budding romantic relationship with an abandoned mother of one is left a bit unformed. Real convention footage is integrated smoothly within the fictionalized drama, though these overtures (used for atmosphere) do call attention to themselves, as do a few stray acting moments from amateurs behaving too 'naturally'. However, this heatedly emotional and viscerally-charged film is still quite potent and arresting on many levels. **1/2 from ****

"Medium Cool" (1968) Dir: Haskell WexlerWhen I first saw "Medium Cool" I was far too young to appreciate it for what it actually is. I loved it anyway, perhaps partially because it baffled me. I was born in suburban England in 1986, and thus had no frame of reference for the setting of social unrest that is used as an omnipresent main character, alongside Robert Forster's brilliant John Cassellis - news cameraman, modern professional, and casual womaniser. Critics of this film have said that the plot is too thin and unlikely to support its pretensions, and that the final scenes are merely opportunistic instead of profound. I disagree with this, but not directly - it does have pretensions, and it is a little thin on plot. But the final scenes are literally stunning, and have deservedly assured this film's place in history.Cassellis is clinical about his job and cynical towards his employers. In his own words, he loves to shoot film. He documents occurrences without judging them. In a way, he is like Gene Hackman's Harry Caul character in the equally brilliant "The Conversation", who doesn't care what people are talking about as long as he gets "a nice fat recording". But Cassellis is not an obsessive. Throughout the course of the film, he grows to accept the cultural and philosophical impact of his profession as a kind of vessel for public information. When he discovers his tapes are being viewed by the authorities, his principles are violated. We are shown the mutually antagonising relationship between 'the people' and 'the news media' as John realises the implications of what he has been contributing to. This sounds less than exciting, but the backdrop itself is Chicago circa 1968 - a city so restless and colourful that this fairly heavy concept is counterbalanced by the images themselves. We watch Cassellis and his soundman cover the National Guards' riot training, the morale-raising songs of a civil rights protest group, campaigners for Robert Kennedy, and more. A particularly memorable sequence involves the black residents of a tenement block explaining to the cameraman how he, as a representative of 'the media', carries the baggage of institutionalised prejudice through their front door. Sure, the tenants are actors (as is Peter Boyle as the Gun Clinic Manager) but they fit seamlessly. In this scene, as in most of the movie, the "cameraman" being spoken to is both the character of Cassellis, Haskell Wexler himself, and by extension everyone who is watching.How Harold and his mother Eileen relate to all of this is a more abstract and difficult question - they are natives of West Virginia, and the flashback scenes of deep country woodlands and old-fashioned religion seem to suggest that they represent the past, the "age of innocence" in the movie's tag-line. But this isn't the effect they have on the plot. They are out of place in this volatile city, but so is everyone else, John included. And when we are plunged into the heart of the riots for the last scenes of the film, we have no time to speculate on what exactly Wexler was trying to say; because he himself is there - the director is holding the camera, dodging tear gas and avoiding the batons of the riot police, and filming the injured protesters. Its significance is elevated beyond mere entertainment. The fiction in "Medium Cool" exists mainly to highlight the intimidating labyrinth of fact.There is technical boldness to be admired too: the cinematography is an impressive framing of undiluted reality, and the editing and soundtrack is inspired. The performances of Forster and the young amateur Harold Blankenship are equally captivating, with Verna Bloom not far behind.