Miloš Forman’s 1979 adaptation of Gerome Ragni, James Rado & Galt MacDermot’s 1968 smash musical Hair is one of those films I’d always known about, and known a few songs from, but beyond that had very little actual knowledge of.
After catching a screening of Tommy The Movie at the BFI as part of their Musicals season I picked up a copy of their new edition of Hair.
Released in conjunction with the season, and with it being of a similar era and coming from a similar counterculture movement as not only Ken Russell’s film but other musicals I like such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show I thought it more than worth a go… and I’m certainly not disappointed.
The story of the film, adapted, I believe, somewhat freely from the stage version, lands us in mid-60s Oklahoma where the improbably named Claude Bukowski (John Savage) is catching a bus to New York to enlist (following being conscripted its implied) for the war in Vietnam.
Arriving in Central Park he encounters a group of hippies, clearly the sort of people he’s never seen before, as well as a group of young, upper class, debutantes who are equally alien to him.
From there the film, loosely, follows his experiences with the hippies and attempts to woo Sheila (Beverley D’Angelo) the debutante and then his enlisting in the army showing, in some sense, the divisions between different parts of American society.
I say it loosely follows his experiences because, as with many musicals, the plot is really secondary to the spectacle and, in this case, the message it’s trying to convey — though it’s hard to avoid the fact that the message, rather unsurprisingly about personal identity, the Vietnam war and, it seems, issues within the late 60s counterculture movement, is fairly muddled.
In its final moments (at least before the big finale) it does coalesce somewhat and, if nothing else, the shot of lines of soldiers marching into the blackness of a transport plane is a terrific vision of young men metaphorically marching to their doom, while the reverse shot of the men walking into silhouette does a great job of pointing out the identity removing nature of the military.
When it comes to the spectacle Forman takes an interesting approach but one that I think works in the context of the film.
While a few of the songs are indisputable classics, particularly, Age Of Aquarius, I Got Life and Let The Sunshine In, Forman takes, for much of the film, a more realistic tone in his way of showing things.
With this, while he still finds room for a few excellent dance and movement sequences (choreographed by Twyla Tharp), the more striking thing are the scenes, particularly during a protest concert in the park, that manage to emulate something of the feel of the Woodstock documentary/concert film that also, of course, fits in with the film’s setting.
At other points Forman goes entirely into un-naturalistic territory, highlighted by a dream/trip sequence for Claude that includes everything from flying pregnant women to Hare Krishna chanting accompanied by hippie dancing girls — all in a surprisingly cavernous TARDIS like Small Town church.
Along with this, the early scenes in Central Park in particular, have something of the feel of The Warriors which wasn’t a comparison I expected to be drawing but given when and where it is set and shot really shouldn’t be so surprising.
While visually impressive, generally entertaining and with some strong messages the film does have a few problems.
Along with the fact that it feels like something a bit out of time being released ten years too late for its main explicit message it also is, to modern eyes, problematic in its depictions of both race and gender roles.
While it’s far from the only film of the time to have this problem being supposedly a more forward thinking piece it jars somewhat but also maybe says something about the original counterculture movement itself.
Hair then is something of a mess of a film and is very much ‘of its time’ but through that, suitably, shines a movie with some great sequences, songs and messages that certainly more than deserves its position in the wider pop cultural subconscious – I’d love to see the original stage production now though.
Tommy Girard 