High School (1969)

"Any questions?" I guess I never realized how loaded of a...question... the above is. It's usually asked after some prescriptive lecture, and the "any" never actually means "any," because as High School illustrates, part of fitting in, conforming, and functioning in a…

laird

This was my first time seeing a prime era Wiseman, as opposed to his later, more sprawling documentaries, and the tighter thematic focus really sings out. Here, it's all about how even in The Freest Country On Earth we seem to be hopelessly obsessed with guiding children…

Joe

"I think that it's nice to be individualistic, but there are certain places to be individualistic."

Will Sloan

I wasn’t trying to be individualistic. 

Alyssa Heflin

"The Spectator Club will discuss Martin Luther King's assassination today at 3:15 in Room 228." All at once, a strange time capsule, a disheartening reminder of the failure of the American education system, a capturing of ugly passivism, and the source of our current…

Carlos Valladares

Seventy-five minutes long and contained inside a high school and yet it encapsulates the entire American political landscape of the late 1960s.

KYK

Wife, during the girls' gym class scene, in which the camera focuses on and isolates individual body parts: "Oh, so this is the Crazy Horse guy." Impossible not to read in the context of war. Obviously the on-going one in Vietnam (and that crushing final line!) but also…

Sean Gilman

On this viewing, I broke out in hives at the staff member whose job is apparently to patrol the halls making sure nobody is there without a pass.

Will Sloan

A series of frustrating but mostly benign and funny confrontations between authority and individuality, old formal barriers being bumped but never quite broken by the kids, until that last scene which is like a gut-punch reversal that changes the tone of everything that…

Joe