An Excellent Film

I wish Robert Redford had made this movie when I burning out towards the end of college. Basically, he plays a political science professor giving it with double barrels to some kid who is choosing cynicism, criticism and another major over engagement with the real nuts and bolts politics. During the same hour that their conversation takes place, a journalist and a senator square off over the ethics of their respective actions as the senator announces a new strategy in Afghanistan, and two young soldiers who used to be Redford's star students take part in the leading offensive of this new strategy.

To Quote:

Todd: "Well isn't that my point? Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, they can't fix things, what the hell is Todd Hayes gonna do?"
Redford; "Bitch? Quit?"
Todd: "Hey, look, I'm gonna pay my taxes, all right? I'm gonna obey traffic lights, allright?"
Redford: "I was thinking about something bigger."
Todd: "Something bigger? Bigger like what, be a congressman? Oh, yeah, super, and then I get to be one of those turds in DC--and I mean, pure pieces of ****--make our laws? I get to be a doughboy, who parts his hair on the same side as everybody else, the guy who, who never says anything even though he never stops talking? Oh, I get to be the guy who, who lecture you on morality, while the page jacks me off under the desk? Oh, yeah, please, the guy who funnels away a million that doesn't belong to him and balls like an evangelist when he gets caught. And how many never get caught, doc? Hey, if that's something bigger than being a good joe with a good job, then, ****it. Yeah, that's where you lost me."
[long pause]
Redford: "You almost convinced me. You almost convinced me that you really know what you're talking about. You're great with words, son, but you know what would make them even better, is if they had a heartbeat. If they were rooted in any kind of experience. If you had knocked on doors, licked envelopes, been to a **** public rally...just put yourself on the line in any meaningful way."

[later]

Todd: "What changed?"
Redford: "You. The students sitting across from me."
Todd: "'Cause we're more shrewd, because we see how things work, because we don't want to live and die for these pieces of ****."
Redford: "No. Because you want to put as much distance between yourselves and the real world as possible. And these, these "pieces of **** [the corrupt and powerful]," they bank on your apathy--they bank on your willful ignorance. They plan strategies around it!
Todd: "So blame me for it all. Blame me because I, I just want to live the good life, because I'm smart enough to? You're gonna blame me, because I don't want to work elbow to elbow with you on a g-----n collective farm? Doc, you're starting to sound a **** of a lot like my parents. They're always harping on me about how they worked so hard to give me the better life, and then they resent the **** out of me because I got the nerve to enjoy it."
Redford: "Todd, what good is a $90,000 Benz...if there's not only not enough gas in the tank, but the streets and the highways are decaying to the point of becoming third world? With all your rants about Congress and the government are true, if things are really bad, as bad as you say they are...when thousands of American troops are dead and more are dying every day, probably as we are speaking, you tell me, how can you enjoy the good life? Rome is burning, son. And the problem is not with the people that started it--they're past, irredeemable--the problem is with us: all of us. Who do nothing. Who just sit, and try to maneuver around the edges of the flame. Now I tell you something. There are people out there, day to day, all over the world that are fighting to make this better..."
Todd: "You think it's better to have tried and failed that to never have tried, right? But what is the difference if you end up in the same place?"
Redford: "...Well at least you did something."

[then later, in class]

Student: "C'mon, when hasn't a big house with high walls been the American dream?"
Michael Pena: "July 5th, 1776."
Derek Luke: "What about December 8th, 1941?"
Pena: September 12th, 2001?"

[later, in the office.]

Redford: "The decisions you make now, bud, can be changed...with years and years of hard work to re-do it. And in those years you become something different. Everybody does, as time passes--you get married, you get into debt...but you're never going to be the same person you are right now. And "promise," and "potential,"--it's a very fickle thing. And it just might not be there anymore...the tough thing about adulthood is that--it starts before your even know it starts: when you're already a dozen decisions into it. But what you need to know, Todd: no lifeguard's watching you anymore. You're on your own. You're your own man, and the decisions you make now are yours and yours alone from here until the end."

This is one of those movies that shows us what it is like to be part of our generation, in the flux: part of our generation and safe and not responsible, or part of our generation and courageous.

And it's really well filmed :) Watch this movie.