Le Révolutionnaire

"The Revolutionary" is a product of its times. The early 70s was a scary time in the world...with talks of revolution and class warfare. However, what amazed me so much about this movie isn't the subject matter...but that the subject matter is presented in such a boring and sterile fashion. NONE of the fire you'd expect in a revolutionary in this film...just talk...and none of which seemed to carry any emotion or energy.

Jon Voigt plays 'A'...the lead in this somnambulistic saga. He instills this role with as much energy as you'd expect from a lampshade. And, as a result I had to fight very hard to stick with the film and this wacky philosophy student's journey from campus radical to violent revolutionary. I also didn't care one bit about him or his friends. The movie SHOULD have been powerful and full of life...but rarely approached anything more than malaise.

While the film has a few good actors and the story idea could have been interesting, the end result is tedious and hard to recommend to anyone...except an insomniac.

I don't mind a film that moves slowly as long as there are other things to compensate==beautiful cinematography or fine, intense acting (a la The Passenger, The American, or the Tree of Life). But Voight's acting is ordinary, the supporting actors are incidental at best, and the photography is kind of odd. And though the movie was filmed almost exclusively in alleyways and university offices, there is no disguising that this is sooty London and not urban America. The tone of the movie reminds me a bit of the Graduate, moving kind of aimlessly about, with a hero that was not quite sure what he wanted, juxtaposed against the mores of uninvolved upper middle class elders who he secretly despises ( while coveting their WASPy daughters), and grittier street types.

A member of a radical committee at a U. S. university gets fed up with all the talk and lack of action of his group and decides to pursue his activism outside academia in the 'real world'. One of a number of radical student campus protest films made in 1969 and 1970, this 1970 example was directed by Paul Williams, and comes from the pen of Hans Koningsberger (who also wrote the novel 'A Walk with Love and Death'). Jon Voight plays the over fussy slightly comical radical student who goes out from the cosy world of academia into the world of strikes,pickets,violence,the draft,desertion,prison,court cases and home made bombs,whilst trying to conduct a relationship with a young bourgeois(Jennifer Salt). Almost like the diary of a feint hearted radical, as when you look at Voight's character your looking at not just a critic of the establishment but someone who is in certain ways representative of it. There's a fair amount of food for thought here in this satirical dry comedy, which here gives a rather poor view of U. S. democracy and freedom of speech, with protests being violently suppressed at the drop of a baton. Filmed in Britain.

It's too low key to arouse much passion, but The Revolutionary is a reasonably interesting look at radical left wing activity in the late 60s. Jon Voight mumbles his way through his role as a college student wrestling with his conscience (and getting expelled for listening to it). Robert Duvall is on hand as a more experienced organiser and Seymour Cassel is his usual fun self as Leonard, the token hippie. There are some very good moments,including a scene where Voight is caught painting anti-capitalist manifestos on a wall. There's also a wonderful pawn shop sequence that gets to the heart and soul of the film's thesis, but too much screen time is spent on Voight's struggling relationships with women. All in all, a period piece that will be of interest to anyone interested in the hard left aspects of political life in the turbulent Vietnam years.