The War at Home

I saw this many years ago, but remember it as the best movie to really recreate the feeling of being in the 1960/70's. The government repression, the anger, fear and paranoia are all there. Enough to cause unsettled sleep for 3 nights. I wasn't at Madison, but a much quieter campus, and the experience was the same all over the country. For comparison, I found "Berkeley in the Sixties" to be very boring.

This is an excellent film for those who are interested in the 60s war resistance movement or who lived in the Madison, WI area during that time. It uses a great combination of interviews with the leaders, both student and other, of the time, and archival footage. A good reminder of a time when people took a stand for what they believed in.

In 1982, when I was a freshman at Edgewood College, I was in an Intro to Political Science; Jim Rowen was my teacher. It was an outstanding class and very influential on my political outlook. I began the class a Republican like my parents and family and at the end of the semester was a Democrat.

The movie was very informative and documented very well the trials and tribulations that the protesters experienced and often times suffered. The build up to the Sterling Hall bombing was very vivid and riveting.

Both the movie, and moreso the class, taught me how wasteful Pentagon spending is when done excessively as it was during the Reagan years as well as with the poor, misguided president we have now.

The movie indicates that with poor policies which lead a nation into a war they have no business fighting, then there will often be repression by the government justifying the war and diligent, compelling people asking questions and voicing their dissent. The hope is that there are enough diligent people as there were during the Vietnam War to make a difference.

*Note* - This "anti-war" documentary, directed by Glenn Silber, was originally released back in 1979.

"The War At Home" is widely considered to be one of the most important political films ever made. And, once you have seen it for yourself you'll completely understand why it has earned itself such high recognition.

Covering the pivotal years from 1961-1975 - This first-rate documentary contains some of the most incredible archival "anti-war protest" footage that you are ever gonna see. It'll really knock your socks off.

This 100-minute presentation also includes a number of very relevant interviews with some of the men who had actually fought in the Vietnam War.

There are a number of films out on the anti-war movement. Some, like the recent 'Weather Underground' never really explain the historical context or the protester's politics, but just stay at the surface of personality and sensational subject matter. Others, like Berkeley in the Sixties, take a completely nostalgic view, embalming leftist politics as something cool boomers did in a now inaccessible past when they were crazy kids. The War at Home, though fills in the background, takes the politics seriously, and imagines that it might be actually worth something to the viewer. While the film is focused on events in Madison, WI, it's interest is by no means limited to folks with experience of that time or place. It's very effective microcosm of the larger movement. While the film has a fairly conventional talking-head-and-archival-clip form, it's well made and engaging. It also has no pretense to 'objectivity,' which is a good thing. A number of observers trace the decline of the anti-war movement to a turn towards violence that alienated more moderate folks who were beginning to question the war after Tet. the first signal event in this supposed turn toward the dark side was a bombing on the University of Wisconsin campus, which becomes the central event in this film. A grad student in science was killed in the blast, and there was great hue and cry that anyone would set off a bomb amidst the seat of higher learning. However, rather than simply casting the bombers as villains, the film seeks to understand their actions, and ultimately sympathizes with them. Rarely do we ever see this -- political radicalism treated as human and comprehensible -- and for presenting the side of the argument we never hear otherwise, The War at Home is a valuable and all too rare document.