The Year That Trembled

This movie was filmed in my hometown. Well, some of it was. During the filming, the town was in very high spirits -- a movie, on our streets! Hell, even I was happy, cynical as I may be. Jonathan Brandis? Yes, please.

About two months ago, I finally found a VHS copy at the local library. And I watched it. And it went on. And on. And on. And on.

The film has a semi-decent beginning, but the constant usage of "flashbacks" (which in this case are long, dreary segments of stock footage circa 1970) made me want to take a long nap. The acting isn't spectacular, but it's okay. Brandis in particular did pretty well.

The dialogue is very cheesy at times. The plot is somewhat hard to follow, with characters you simply don't care about and begin to hate halfway through for getting a movie to their boring selves.

It's sad when the only thing I got from it was "oh, look! That.. that street I played on when I was ten!" It's just an incredibly tedious experience. The settings are drab, the cinematography is boring, the story is sleep-inducing, the characters are .. uh, I don't know. I need another adjective.

Watch something else. Unless below mediocre boring stuff is your cup of tea.

Helen Gardner (Marin Hinkle) teaches at a high school near Kent State University. She is an activist against the war in Vietnam, as are some of her students. On May 4, 1970, they hear news of the shootings at Kent State. As a result of her activities, Helen is fired from her job. She marries a young aspiring lawyer (Jonathan M. Woodward) who throws his energy into a legal suit on behalf of those students who were shot.

Four of Helen's senior students (Jonathan Brandis, Charlie Finn, Sean Nelson, and Lucas Ford) graduate and rent a farmhouse next door to their former teacher and her husband. We follow these people, as well as others they become involved with, for the next year as they stave off the law, protest the war, and try to make some beginning in life while facing the likelihood of being drafted and sent to Vietnam.

The title comes from a poem from Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass".

"YEAR that trembled and reel'd beneath me!/ Your summer wind was warm enough-yet the air I breathed froze me;/ A thick gloom fell through the sunshine and darken'd me;/ Must I change my triumphant songs? said I to myself;/ Must I indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled?/ And sullen hymns of defeat?"

Jay Craven captures in drama the times and the concerns that "Hair" captured as a musical, as he focuses on one of the pivotal events of that time--the shooting of students at Kent State--and how that event and the war that spawned it, affected others in the surrounding communities.

He skillfully interweaves stock footage of film and tv broadcasts from that period, with the fictional lives of some young people (and some old) who were closely connected with those events and were trying to figure out how to relate to a society that seemed to have lost its way.

But the film is not abstractly political, keeping its attention on the personal concerns of the characters in all their ambivalence. Jonathan Brandis, in particular, brings a strong screen presence to his role as the point-of-view character in an ensemble cast, and Charlie Finn provides engaging comic relief as the goofy, but believable, Jim "Hairball" Morton. Henry Gibson, Fred Willard, and Martin Mull show the sympathetic–if not altogether trustworthy–other side of the generation gap that had split along some fault-line in time.

The film is somewhat structurally unfocused in its early part. It took a while to get a sense of each character–longer than can be afforded in a feature film, I'd say. Hairball, for example, at first seemed simply awkward as an actor, rather than goofy as a character. Jay R. Ferguson was excellent in his crucial role, but could have gotten the same effect with less screen time. Others could have been given shorter shrift or perhaps no shrift at all.

But once the film zeroes in on the main characters and plot events, it grabs your attention and hangs on.

"The Year that Trembled" tells the tense story of young writer Casey Pedersen (former child actor Jonathan Brandis, who committed suicide one year after the movie was released) and his friends, who have to face the Vietnam Draft Lottery in the early 1970's.

Based on a Scott Lax novel, "The Year that Trembled" has a compelling premise; however, the predominantly young cast isn't as convincing as in other Jay Craven's movies (veterans Henry Gibson and Fred Willard are always a pleasure to watch, though). Meredith Monroe, of "Dawson's Creek" fame, makes the best impression; she was pretty good in a brief appearance in the made-for-TV flick "Fathers and Sons" and has proved she's got talent. It's curious to see Danica McKellar (the cute girl from "The Wonder Years") in a small part. Although not the best Jay Craven film, "The Year that Trembled" has some inspired, sensitive moments and is worth a visit. My vote: 6.5/10.

Important depiction of a time arguably as turbulent as our current. However, links (or even intimations of them) from past to present are lacking in this film. A faded standalone snapshot, the mood unimpassioned, (ironic given the manic, "trembling" tenor of those times). No room is made or left over for extrapolation or lessons learned--a great opportunity missed. Instead we're dished up startlingly superficial and hackneyed treatment of the era, ineffective character development, and lackluster performances from most of the cast. Further, the film is riddled with anachronisms and suffers from romanticism and historical revisionism--so it comes off as shallow and clichéd. Perhaps this film was made by people too young to understand the flavor of those times. If not, perhaps the filmmakers are part of a well-meaning but removed elite, who took their very best shot at depicting the lives and dramas of their characters, but the closest they could come was creating an approximated, somewhat patronizing, overly polite, "as-if" characterization--which naturally lacks passion, flow, human depth and complexity, and realism. In sum, it's like watching back to back episodes of the mundane NBC drama "American Dreams" (albeit, with a more liberal lean, fortunately), without the energy level. Just about that insightful, realistic, and compelling. In sum, clearly an earnest effort, tho emotionally blunted overall.

Within the last year or two I've seen a lot of bad movies (The Mexican) but this tops the list as being the worst yet. Creativity is at a complete loss and the casting of actors was even worse. I'd rather see an independent film with unknown actors rather than having to watch Jonathan Brandis prance around the set as if he had a bad case of hemorrhoids. The guy looks disgruntled and constipated throughout the whole film, even when he's engaging in sexual activities with beautiful but untalented actresses. Too much of the film deals with teens smoking pot and discussing (and repeating) the consequences of being drafted into the Vietnam War. Apparently in 1970 that's all that people did, at least that's all that the overly pretentious title represents. With any luck at all The Year that Trembled could be released as a TV movie due to its semi-familiar faces.