Opisy(1)
In the mid-1970s, propped in between 1960s civil rights and 1980s individualism, Robert Kramer and John Douglas interviewed dozens of American men and women who had rebelled against the establishment in the past decade. As founders of the Newsreel Collective, Kramer and Douglas had filmed The People's War in Vietnam in 1969, about society in North Vietnam that was living (and dying) under American fire. Milestones centers around the leftist activists in the States, but it's much more than a political statement. Through a combination of documentary and staged reenactments, it reveals the ideals of a generation that saw its vision crushed by reality. They had big dreams, but as the New York Times wrote in response to the film, if it had only rained for 20 days, Noah too would have had to leave his ark and make a life for himself in that same country. Such was the fate of these leftist activists. The situations are dramatized, but the ideas and experiences are real. For some, dreams have been replaced by narcissistic apathy, while others still live in communes and cling desperately to the remains of a utopia. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)
(więcej)Recenzje (1)
A chronicle of countercultural communities in the first half of the 1970s in the USA, a left-wing hippie report on the state of the Union, Kramer's sweeping meditation on the relationship between individual and collective life and the possibility for both to establish a relationship with truth and authenticity. Although the film was made during Kramer's obviously militant period, his readable yet unbreakable (probably) sadness, and nostalgia - the character of a returnee from prison who was imprisoned for aiding emigrant deserters fleeing from the US from the war in Vietnam, a character who can no longer integrate back into past struggles, the gradual disappearance of enthusiasm: Kramer's probe into the time period and his fate as a nonconforming filmmaker, exiled to European solitude (and the fact that the USA still hasn't accepted Kramer and probably can't is evident from the fact that the film, shot on 16mm, was restored by the French and Portuguese). A generous mosaic on the edge of a documentary, an essay on American life, history, and identity, and a point and feelings that amplify fiction.
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