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.
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