We Can't Go Home Again (1976, 2011)

We Can't Go Home Again (1976, 2011), directed by Nicholas Ray, 2.5 stars

In the early 1970s, Nicholas Ray spent his retirement years no less busy than he did in his youth as classical Hollywood director.  Hired by Harpur College (now SUNY Binghamton) in 1971 to teach filmmaking, he and his students created scads of footage for a class project that turned into this little known, unique, and surrealistic experiment that is both fascinating to watch and difficult to sit through.  More a series of loosely coupled vignettes than a narrative of any discernible kind, the film consists largely of multiple images in multiple formats (35mm, 16mm, 8mm, and early digital) projected simultaneously on the screen.  The audio is so poor and badly looped in so many spots that I couldn't tell if the dialogue in the simultaneously projected scenes overlapped or not.  But I get the sense that none of this mattered very much to Ray or to his students.  His aim was to teach and theirs to learn, and they all apparently took turns contributing to the film both in front of and behind the camera.  This includes Ray, who likewise participated fully, not only behind the scenes, but on screen as well.  His role was that of an aging Hollywood director who winds up teaching a film class to make the very film we’re watching.  It’s as if the student film and a “making of” documentary were mysteriously stitched together to form a crazy quilt of moving images.

If the film has no real story, it does create a fragile mosaic of disaffected youth during the early 1970s.  It begins with police beating demonstrators at the Chicago democratic convention of 1968, and it makes occasional reference to a larger political landscape that looms beyond the communal cocoon that Ray and his students have created, perhaps, subconsciously, to help them pretend the outside world doesn't really exist.

Initially released in 1976, Ray was never completely happy with the film and reportedly tinkered with it up until his death in 1979.  The version I saw was restored by his widow, Susan, and premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2011.

For a greater appreciation of this film, I strongly recommend its companion piece, “Don’t Expect Too Much” (2011), a genuine behind-the-scenes documentary featuring interviews with the Harpur student filmmakers forty years on.  I can’t say that I liked “We Can’t Go Home Again” very much, but I can say that I'm glad I saw it.