It would be extraordinarily generous to say that political narrative cinema in the United States is going through a “quiet” phase. (“Comatose” might be a more apt description.) I suppose one can argue that films such as Michael Clayton, Syriana, and War Inc. are proudly carrying on the Hollywood liberal tradition; however, I can’t help but think there’s something blatantly deceptive going on when studio-driven, free market ideas and themes come with a $30 million plus price tag attached (Children of Men

There was a time, however, in the mid- to late ’60s when the American studio system was breaking down and making a buck meant more than throwing up the latest Bob Hope comedy into Idaho. Experimentation was everything, and that heady brew could occasionally produce a film such as Medium Cool, whose politics and creation mirrored the turmoil that turned 1968 into the Summer of Hate. What on the surface was a straight-ahead love story set against the backdrop of the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention unexpectedly became a masterpiece of ecstatic documentary fiction that revolutionized the way we see and speak cinema.

Robert Forster and Peter Bonerz are a news reporting team assigned to capture the sights and sounds of Chicago in the summer of 1968. Forster unexpectedly becomes emotionally involved with an Appalachian single mom (Verna Bloom) and her young son. When the son disappears on the eve of the Democratic Convention, Forster and Bloom comb the streets of Chicago, amidst rioting and turmoil, in search of the lost boy.

On the surface, the plot sounds ordinary (even somewhat contrived), yet it’s not the story that makes the film so memorable; it’s the way it’s told. Director Haskell Wexler was a renowned cinematographer whose credits include The Thomas Crown Affair, In the Heat of the Night, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but he also produced, directed, and shot several socially conscious documentaries outside the Hollywood system. Throughout Medium Cool, he placed his actors in actual situations and locations and had them improvise their way through their scenes while a bare-bones crew documented the results. The film is filled with astonishing clashes between the real and imagined; it’s the birth of a revolutionary film grammar that is still shocking today.

Scenes of Forster and Bonerz reporting in the ghetto include footage of locals approaching them and making it clear that if they’re ever seen in those parts again, they’ll be dead. Scenes of Verna Bloom searching for her son evolve into her assimilation into a human blockade against the tanks that are called in to quell the protests. In perhaps the most famous image, riot police attack and beat protesters while throwing tear gas at the camera. This isn’t CGI, folks, especially during the famous moment where you can hear the soundman exclaiming, “Look out, Haskell: it’s real!”

Meanwhile, in the movie summer of 2008, I doubt you’ll be seeing the Space Chimps or Kung Fu Panda

Watch Medium Cool online at www.youtube.com.