USA. In a few months leading up to the presidential election, an African American is brutally murdered. There is no end to senseless overseas military interventions. Lack of proper health care and economic inequality reach epidemic proportions. Tensions in urban areas escalate. Riots, police brutality, and, ultimately, National Guard is called in to facilitate a government crackdown. The year is 1968. The film is Medium Cool.
Haskell Wexler’s film (released 1969) is a chronicle of the most combustible period in modern American history. It combines documentary footage integrated into a fictitious narrative. It is both incendiary and pacifist. It is chaotic and thoughtful. But Medium Cool is more than a sum of its parts – it is the greatest political and moral statement American cinema has ever afforded itself.
Wexler was a top cinematographer of his day: he had just won an Oscar for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, and shot one of the most intense studies of race relations – In the Heat of the Night, for Norman Jewison. Born in Chicago in 1922, he volunteered for a harrowing WWII service as a Merchant Marine, where he advocated desegregation. After the war, Wexler gained film experience in documentaries. In his Academy Award-nominated short, The Living City (1953), the dreary footage of Chicago’s underbelly is given this narration: “The American city is scarred beyond belief.”
Contrary to the establishment’s efforts to promote the American Dream, the literary and journalistic output of the 50s and early 60s offered a less rosy scenario. In his ground-breaking novel, Invisible Man (1952), Ralph Ellison dissected the social conditions and identity dilemmas of African Americans. Michael Harrington’s influential study, The Other America: Poverty in the United States (1962), broke the spell of perceived prosperity for the whites, while reinforcing the obvious sentiments of minorities. It was a horrific time: the JFK assassination, war in Vietnam, constant suppression of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements. By 1968, a time bomb was set to explode. The air was so thick with anxiety, most progressives anticipated the escalation of violence. Haskell Wexler, a life-long leftist, knew he needed to put this on record one way or another.
Wexler had already been writing his script when Martin Luther King was murdered in April of 1968. Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination took place in June, after Medium Cool had already gone into production. The Tet Offensive was in full swing, and so were the anti-war rallies. The Chicago Democratic convention was set for August, with the infamous Mayor Daley precluding “undesirable” groups from protesting. Over ten thousand police and a six thousand-strong National Guard were on duty. Wexler’s film was now being shot under siege.
The plot revolves around a cameraman, Cassellis (a terrific Robert Forster), as he records daily news for a local TV station. The dramatic arc of the film, so skilfully overlapping real-life events, follows Cassellis’ journey from a dispassionate recorder to an active participant. He starts as a cynical pro with a strong intuition for breaking news. He is young, virile and enjoys life’s pleasures to the hilt. By the end of the film, you see a fully transformed man – a caring, involved, and politically aware person. In the rapidly escalating tension of Medium Cool, it is easy to overlook Forster’s committed performance. The actor never allows himself to dominate the action – he fuses with it organically. His Cassellis is a flawed, passionate and, ultimately, tragic figure. We believe in him because he is not larger than life – it is the life of that historical moment which proves too large for him to contain.
The main character idea came from a novel, Concrete Wilderness (Jack Couffer, 1967), in which a cameraman befriends a young boy in the urban jungle of New York City. Shifting the action to Chicago, Wexler made sure that the city itself becomes a central character in the film. Subverting expectations, art deco and modernist beauty of Chicago’s skyline yields to a ramshackle shantytown landscape where all windows are facing the gutter. Significantly, for the first time in a Hollywood-distributed narrative movie, the audience was exposed to abject white poverty. Wexler is unsparing in his depiction of the decrepit, run-down quarters inhabited by working-class white dwellers. When the story shifts to an equally dilapidated black neighbourhood, there is no tangible difference. Cinematic poverty has finally lost its dominant hue.
For this unlikely Odyssey through the turbulent streets of Chicago, Wexler developed an alluring aesthetic. Scenes of scripted, traditionally shot action blend with cinéma vérité-style documentary shots of street life and riots. Hand-held, improvised interviews flow along meticulously designed tracking shots. The sound design follows the same pattern: dialogue is crisp when we need it, or swallowed by the ensuing chaos. In the end, the line between reality and fiction is blurred beyond recognition, especially when tear gas is finally deployed (“Look out, Haskell – it’s real!”).
In the heat of its battle, Medium Cool is also a cinematic love letter from the front lines. Wexler quotes from such classics as Jean Cocteau’s Orphée (1950), and references a fellow iconoclast, Jean-Luc Godard, on numerous occasions. There is a definite New Wave feel to the proceedings, anticipating the stylistic liberties of New Hollywood. But the inescapable reference point is Gillo Pontecorvo’s devastating The Battle of Algiers (1966), where similar techniques were employed to recreate a sense of historical truth. The pedigree of Medium Cool is as venerable as it is rarified. Seldom political films have been profitable in Hollywood, but Wexler’s film opened the floodgates to counterculture cinema of the 70s. Alas, the director is a spiritual kin of such European anti-establishment filmmakers as Francesco Rosi and Costa-Gavras. And, contextually, Medium Cool has much more in common with the urgency of Roberto Rossellini of the 40s, than it does with Frank Capra’s wide-eyed idealism.
There is a circular logic to Medium Cool, even if it seems to cram in too much information into its 110 minute runtime (several topics were cut due to duration concerns). On the first viewing, one is impressed with the sheer scope of the undertaking, but possibly puzzled by the rather oblique point of view. There are no answers provided. There is no easy way out. But the key to interpretation lies in the title. The eponymous “cool” medium of television, as Marshall McLuhan observed, is referencing its own dispassionate nature. That detachment has trickled down to our lives. How often do we pass an accident on the street without stopping? How often do we participate through a smartphone recording rather than braving the situation with physical actions? Ultimately, Haskell Wexler aims his camera at the viewer – thus turning us into subjects rather than passive bystanders. The circle is now complete.
Can we ever break out of the cursed loop of history? I think we are ready to face today’s reality with more than just taking a snapshot.
Our externally-imposed isolation carries a risk of distancing us further. From our community, from participating in civil duties, from paying active attention. Watching films like Medium Cool in solitude defeats the purpose of such work in more ways than one. But the main issue is this: why films like Medium Cool are not being made anymore? Are we afraid to be engaged in such topics, or has cinema grown too timid and complacent to offer us this level of challenge?
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