The Year That Trembled | AccessAtlanta

The Year That Trembled

The film focuses on a ragtag group of college kids.

FILM FACTS

Starring: Jonathan Brandis, Marin Hinkle and Jim "Hairball" Morton
Director: Jay Craven
Rating: Not rated, but contains language, sexuality, drug use and violence
Genre: Drama, Indie

Discuss this film | Official movie site

Opens 04/11/03 (limited)
(Unrated) 95 minutes

Grade: C-

Verdict: The film that fumbled.

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Making a movie about the pivotal year of 1970 is a great idea. It's the year the National Guard fired on Kent State students demonstrating against the Vietnam War, killing four of them. It's when campuses across the nation shut down in protest. It's when the reality of the draft lottery hit hard.

Writer-director Jay Craven, working from a book by Scott Lax, was smart enough to see the possibilities and sensitive enough to appreciate the inherent romance of the time (or at least the perceived romance). But he doesn't yet have what it takes to bring off a complex, textured movie.

Hence, "The Year That Trembled," a film that means to do well by the late '60s-early '70s, yet does the era a disservice. The focus is on a ragtag bunch of college students, teachers and campus hangers-on, each affected in a different way by the war abroad and at home. One is considering a draft-dodge to Canada. Another is thinking about filing a lawsuit on behalf of the dead Kent State students. A third, a teacher, comes under fire for her activist activities.

Craven gets a number of grace notes right — a VW bus, a dog named Nixon. He even pulls off a good Bread and Puppet Theater joke. ("We're gonna make more big puppets?" asks someone. "What are we, Drama Club?")

However, the larger picture is synthetic. The filmmaker wants to honor the importance of Kent State — the first time student demonstrators were killed in the United States — but he never captures the flashpoint the incident was. And there could have been less name-dropping. For instance, a sympathetic priest is a buddy of the Berrigan brothers. And all these girls in charge of movement meetings ... what universe — I mean, campus — is he thinking of? But the movie's weaknesses aren't just issues of time and place. (Though, more than any other generation, baby boomers feel they "own" their youth.) The large ensemble cast is difficult to sort out. The plot is about as well-organized as a peace march.

At least Craven is sincere, unlike Hollywood's vapid and misguided attempts to be "far out" (like 1970's "The Strawberry Statement"). He sees many of his characters as sometimes wrongheaded and confused, but also idealistic, maybe even a tad heroic.

That's not enough to rescue the film from coming off like a bad acid flashback. But to give the filmmaker credit, at least no one says "far out."