Mailer was down in Miami on assignment for Harper\u2019s Magazine<\/em>; Wexler\u2019s project was slightly more on-the-fly in comparison. That\u2019s not to say he doesn\u2019t have the credentials: Studs Terkel, the legendary historiographer of the city, is credited as \u201cour man in Chicago,\u201d and Wexler\u2019s keen interest in all corners of a deeply segregated place is consistently on display. Still, Medium Cool<\/em> might seem at first like an unexpected project for Wexler, initially known for his cinematography on such classics as Who\u2019s Afraid of Virginia Woolf<\/em> and In the Heat of the Night<\/em>. But he also had an equally prolific career as a committed political documentarian, taking on incendiary subjects such as My Lai and the Weather Underground. As his first (mostly) fictional directorial effort, Medium Cool<\/em> splits the difference between these two vocations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The film \u2013 which takes its title from Marshall McLuhan\u2019s description of television \u2013 is ostensibly the story of a news cameraman named John, played by Robert Forster (who, it must be said, was an underrated hottie in his day). But he\u2019s less of a character than a vessel through which Wexler poses a series of questions about both the creation and consumption of a medium that was in many ways still in its infancy. This is evident from the startling opening scene, which finds John and his soundman arriving at a gruesome roadside accident. We watch as they circle the wreck with their equipment, maneuvering to get the best angles, and only slowly does it dawn on us that they\u2019ve come before the police, the bloodied bodies of the victims still lying in the street. \u201cBetter call an ambulance,\u201d John mutters as they walk away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s because of this ability to detach himself from what he\u2019s seeing that John is so good at his job. Empathy isn\u2019t required for subjects you\u2019re merely observing, and that\u2019s true when he\u2019s just watching the news too. \u201cJesus I love to shoot film,\u201d he says at one point while Martin Luther King, Jr. is heard off screen. Context clues let us know that King is being shown on T.V. because of his recent assassination. The first half of Medium Cool<\/em> mostly follows along as John goes on various jobs \u2013 the Resurrection City camp, Bobby Kennedy\u2019s funeral, and, eerily in retrospect, the National Guard running through a protest exercise. Whether these are events Wexler staged or just happened upon is up to the viewer to decide; what he\u2019s primarily interested in is getting a reaction regardless. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We also see moments in John\u2019s personal life, which drive the film\u2019s second half. After learning that his footage is regularly handed over to the F.B.I. for viewing, he\u2019s fired from his job and set adrift. A chance encounter draws him to Eileen (Verna Bloom), a transplant from West Virginia with a young son, who seems fully removed from the frenetic pace of his world. But there\u2019s no separating the personal from the political in 1968 America, and the two halves converge at the infamous Democratic National Convention, which was roiled by clashes between police and protestors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These scenes take up roughly the final twenty minutes of Medium Cool<\/em>, and it\u2019s here that Wexler\u2019s questions about complicity and truthfulness in mass media take on a muscular urgency. While it was clear that the convention would involve some disruption, the intensity and vindictiveness of the violence that the police inflict on the protestors must have been dangerous to film in the moment, and it feels dangerous to watch. As Eileen wanders the streets in a daze looking for her lost son, the line between Bloom\u2019s performance and her genuine fears for her safety blurs so much as to become nonexistent. John, meanwhile, is inside the amphitheater on a freelance assignment, filming the delegate count and Mayor Daley\u2019s remarks. He\u2019s missing all the real action, but Wexler wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It all might lead us to wonder: why make a fictional film at all? Wouldn\u2019t a documentary about this unstable time better capture what it was like to live it? But Wexler\u2019s ultimate aim isn\u2019t simply to capture 1968, but recreate it, and possibly rebuild it. Medium Cool<\/em> often feels most alive when his camera goes where John\u2019s can\u2019t, like the casual discussion amongst a militant Black Power group or the psychedelic Mothers of Invention concert. Maybe he thought a documentary about television, with its talking heads and rigorous reporting, wouldn\u2019t be as truthful, and it wouldn\u2019t allow Wexler to indict himself in the same way the ouroboros ending of his film does. How do you make sense of unbelievable times? Maybe, as John points out and Wexler\u2019s film aptly demonstrates, it\u2019s with a script.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the decades since 1968, Medium Cool<\/em> has only become more relevant as the runtime for newscasts has lengthened and the cycle for content has shortened. Many of the radical methods Wexler employs here \u2013 handheld shots, breaks in the fourth wall, ironic soundtrack cues, clever cross-cuts (like the one from a black man making a gun with his finger to a white woman at a shooting rage) \u2013 would go on to be used in countless features of all kinds. But in his expert hands, they feel new to watch even now, like if a remix existed before the hit song. While this year\u2019s DNC should be somewhat less contentious, Medium Cool<\/em> stands as a potent reminder that what we see onscreen is always someone else\u2019s construction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/medium-cool2-1024x668.jpg\")
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