Getting Straight

Considering what this film was about I was quite surprised how well the film and its ideology stand up today.

There are several reasons why. Firstly, the film doesn't present the student establishment as 100% right and the establishment/teachers as 100% wrong. This is because the film's central character Harry Bailey is presented as belonging somewhere in the middle. On one hand he's dismayed by the establishment's inabilities to understand what the students actually want but on the other hand he's dispirited by the students protesting on frivolous issues as well as a hint of double standards within the movement.

A good example of this is the character of Dr. Wilhunt who opposes Harry's move into teaching. While portrayed in the wrong, he's not a one-dimensional monster but someone who is realistic about how much a teacher can change students' morals while teaching english grammar.

In fact it's Harry's friend, hippie Nick Philbert, who brings him down when after attempting to avoid the draft, he joins the Marines and turns into a moralistic, gung-ho youth. Only at the end of the film does Harry realise what an unworthy, crazy person he is. It could've been easy for the film to make Dr. Wilhunt as the one who brings Harry down but it avoids the easy path and shows us that there are untrustworthy people everywhere in society whether they be young, old, conservative or radical.

Then there is the character of Harry Bailey who's in virtually every scene in the film. Again the film doesn't portray him as some flawless character who fights against the conservative establishment for noble causes. Instead we get someone who's intelligent, compassionate and idealistic but who also has traits of selfishness and foolishness. That he's a realistic, believeable, flawed but likeable person helps the film immesuarably. A lot of this credit must go to Elliott Gould who's excellent in the role.

Special note must be of the direction and cinematography which make the film look both stylish and fluid.Particularly impressive is the use of focussing on more then one object or character in the same shot as it's cleverly used to make points about events or people in narrational terms instead of words.

All in all a superb film and especially so when compared to another student film of the same era, the inept RPM.

The first time I saw this movie was in a drive-in movie when I was in high school (just make a left turn at the submarine races and you'll find it). and the film opened uniquely enough to keep me from ignoring it for better things to do.

As the opening credits rolled, the students were tossing this nice red apple across the campus, looking at it, smiling or laughing, and tossing it on to someone else. This kept up all the way through the credits until it drove you nuts. What the hell was on that apple that was so damned fascinating?!?!? Just when the credits ended, the camera angle changed over this student's shoulder and you could see that someone had carved (very neatly, mind you) into the apple, the following message: "THERE IS NO GRAVITY--THE EARTH SUCKS" I have never forgotten that opening scene nor the message on the apple because as I got older, I found that indeed; the Earth does suck--I can see it in the mirror every day.

I think everyone should see where we came from and what historically we've lived through so I recommend this movie for when you're stuck inside on one of those dreary weather days when you've got nothing to do.

There is a good point and bad point to every argument and that's what this movie is all about and remember that if we don't learn from our past then we're doomed to repeat it.

OK. Mainly, if you want to see Ms. 10-cents-a-minute and (to a greater extent) Mr. Gould make fools of themselves, check this relic out. It's suffused with dated political jargoneering and tedious, tortured ruminations on the expediency of individual political action circa 1970. Historically interesting (maybe).

one of my favorite oldies.Candice had just left the University of Pennsylvania where she literally stopped traffic on campus because of her beauty (I actually saw it happen!).She never looked as good in films as she did in real life at that time.I believe that the line Eliot Gould uses when he's had enough of the professor's comments about Fitzgerald's homosexuality is that yes it could be possible that he was a homosexual but that it sure would be news to Sheila Graham (not Zelda) with whom he had an apparently scandalous affair when he was in Hollywood trying to make money.I was in college during that era and there its a fairly good representation of the way things were then and indicative of the nuttiness of that era

Even for its period, I found this film's attitudes to women and gay men disturbing and this took away from my appreciation of it as a well-made film which, in many ways, has its heart in the right place. Women seem expected to serve their men both domestically and sexually and Candice Bergen's character puts up with some horrendous abuse from Elliott Gould's character - more so than most liberated educated women of that time would do. Then there is a crack early on about Arizona being a good place to live because of its low rate of homosexuality. And Nick tries to get out of the draft by pretending to be a stereotypically effeminate gay man, with Gould repeatedly using the 'F' word to describe him. And then there's the argument in the last scene. I suspect the writers just wanted the academic to say something absurd but the choice they made suggests that there is something inherently wrong in being gay and/or that academia has been taken over by gay men pushing their "homosexual agenda". Of course it is then up to our heterosexual male hero to violently protest against this. Perhaps the students' rights campaigns of this time were paternalistic and homophobic and this film just reflects that, but I hope at least some of the people at that time had a more progressive way of looking at the world.