Hair Blu-ray Review
It Was Never the Age of Aquarius
Reviewed by Michael Reuben, June 23, 2011
After winning the best director Oscar for
One
Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Miloš Forman chose
what must have been the toughest option on offer: a movie of the musical
Hair. Leave aside the
fact that movie musicals were falling out of fashion (and have never returned), as audiences grew
unwilling to accept the convention of characters bursting into song. The challenge of
Hair was
that it was more a revue than a musical, an evening of catchy songs performed by characters who
shared experiences with the audience before the curtain fell. Lacking a traditional narrative (a
"book", in theater parlance), the show used the excitement of a rock concert to hold the
audience's attention. Before you could even consider rolling the cameras, someone had to write a
new story. The task ultimately fell to playwright Michael Weller.
The first problem Weller had to address was the passage of time. When
Hair first debuted at
Joe Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival in 1967, then moved to Broadway the next year, the
Vietnam War was at its height, and every American male had to register for the draft upon
turning eighteen. These offstage realities resonated through every performance of
Hair, such that
the mere act of burning a draft card on stage supplied volumes of subtext. By the time Forman
made his film, the war was long over and the draft had been abolished. Weller's screenplay had
to find other ways to express the dark undercurrents that have always been an essential
counterpoint to
Hair's joyous outpourings. It's a common misconception that the musical and the
film declared "the dawning" of the Age of Aquarius. That was more an expression of hope -
even defiance - in the face of pain, loss and insurmountable odds. Every version of
Hair I've seen,
including the successful 2009 Broadway revival, ends with the death of a
major character (though not always the same one).
In Oklahoma, a young man, Claude Bukowski (John Savage), bids his father farewell and boards
a bus for New York City to be inducted into the army. This opening immediately alerted fans of
the stage musical to expect something different, because the original Claude was a conflicted
young rebel from Flushing, Queens.
With a few days' leisure time in New York, Claude wanders into Central Park, where he
encounters the Sixties counterculture in full swing. He watches in fascination as a diverse group
of people dance and celebrate nothing in particular ("Aquarius"). Several people draw special
attention: Berger (Treat Williams), a naturally charismatic leader; Woof (Don Dacus), who is
white; Hud (Dorsey Wright, who would appear the same year in
The
Warriors), who is black;
and Jeannie (Annie Golden, later a regular on
Cheers), who is pregnant by either Woof or Hud
but is content to wait until the baby's birth to find out which one.
Though amused by the group, Claude is prepared to continue sightseeing when a chance
encounter changes his plans. A rich girl, Sheila Franklin (Beverly D'Angelo, long before the
Vacation movies), rides through the park on horseback with her two future bridesmaids. Berger
and his friends playfully chase them ("Sodomy"), but lose control of the horse they've rented for
the occasion. Claude, with his western skills, comes to their rescue and is instantly smitten with
Sheila, who rides away ("Donna"). Claude remains in the park, and the new friends party through
the night ("Hashhish", "Colored Spade", "Manchester, England", "I'm Black/Ain't Got No").
(Sheila's character is another major departure from the original musical, where she was a
political activist hopelessly in love with Berger. Traces of that relationship remain in scenes of
flirtation, but otherwise the character in the film might as well have a different name. Even her
signature song, "Easy to Be Hard", has been assigned to someone else.)
As Claude is about to leave the next morning, Berger spots Sheila's engagement announcement
in a discarded newspaper. In his usual Pied Piper style, Berger persuades everyone to crash the
engagement party, which, according to the paper, is in Short Hills, New Jersey. There, Berger
scandalizes the very proper attendees ("I Got Life") and gets himself and all his friends arrested.
Nevertheless, Sheila, who has enough of a rebellious streak to smoke pot with her bridesmaids, is
intrigued.
Claude uses the emergency cash his father gave him to get Berger released, so that Berger can
raise enough money to free the rest of them. In jail, the guards try to cut Woof's hair, sparking a
protest ("Hair"), but Berger returns in time, having cadged the necessary funds from his mother.
The group returns to the park ("Initials"), where Claude has his first experience with LSD, which
induces a twisted vision of a wedding with Sheila ("Hare Krishna"). But after a late-night's
skinny-dipping, Claude must report for induction ("Where Do I Go?"). Scenes at the induction
center are intercut with scenes in the park of groups of women celebrating certain appetites they
share with the army ("Black Boys", "White Boys"). Claude departs for basic training in Nevada
"(Walking in Space").
The following winter, Sheila seeks out the group to share a letter she's received from Claude.
Berger impulsively decides they should all drive out west to visit him ("Good Morning,
Starshine"). They're joined by an unnamed woman from Hud's past, who appears suddenly
calling him "Lafayette" and asking that he return home and help her care for the son
accompanying her, whose name is Lafayette, Jr. ("Easy to Be Hard").
In Nevada, the M.P.'s turn the group away from the base, which is on alert. But Sheila and
Berger devise a brazen ruse to sneak onto the base and smuggle out Claude for a picnic. Still, the
war machine can be mocked but not stopped, and Claude's platoon is ordered onto transport
planes bound for Vietnam ("The Flesh Failures/Let the Sunshine In").
The creators of the stage musical
Hair were vocal in their dissatisfaction with Forman's film, and
in fairness to them, not every change made by Forman and his screenwriter worked equally well.
Setting "Walking in Space", an unabashed paean to hallucinogens, to an army training montage
remains a questionable decision, even today when
The Hurt
Locker has taught us that "war is a
drug". (It isn't
that kind of drug.) "Manchester, England" was always a goofy song, but it makes
zero sense if Claude is an Oklahoma farm boy and not a kid from Flushing trying to pretend he's
exotic. (The introductory dialogue written for Treat Williams doesn't work.) And setting the title
song's equation of hair length and freedom in a jail may have sounded like a good idea on paper,
but after the open spaces of Central Park, even the best camera angles can't make the scene look
anything but cramped and ugly. (It doesn't help that Twyla Tharp's choreography for the
sequence is barely distinguishable from a prison riot.)
But other decisions pay off in interesting ways. Sheila's ballad, "Easy to Be Hard", a top 40 hit,
acquires new layers of poignance when sung by the mother of Lafayette/Hud's son imploring him
to be responsible:
Especially people who care about strangers,
Who care about evil and social injustice.
Do you only care about the bleeding crowd?
"Good Morning, Starshine" gains an added lilt when Sheila sings it to accompany that most
American of pastimes, a road trip. And the ominous strains of "The Flesh Failures" have seldom
been so effectively showcased as in the elaborately edited sequence with which Forman ends the
film (and which I won't spoil for first-time viewers).
Much about
Hair has dated, but I grew up with the show, and I'm surprised at how relevant its
animating impulses still feel. The yearning for transcendence and participation in something
larger than oneself continues unabated, spurred by the fretful sense of hostile machinery run
amuck and barely kept at bay. Like Claude, people routinely ask themselves "Where do I go?",
and few ballads have put the question as simply or with such pathos. In the summer of 2008, I sat
in the Delacorte Theater in Central Park not far from where Forman filmed many of his
sequences and watched the revival of
Hair that eventually transferred to Broadway. As the
chorus sang "The Flesh Failures", the lines seemed newly evocative:
We starve, look
At one another
Short of breath
Walking proudly in our winter coats
Wearing smells from laboratories,
Facing a dying nation,
Of moving paper fantasy
Listening for the new told lies.
With supreme visions of lonely tunes.
Somewhere
Inside something there is a rush of
Greatness,
Who knows what stands in front of
Our lives?
I fashion my future on films in space.
Then the chorus parted, beseeching the heavens to "let the sun shine in", as the body of a dead
soldier was revealed on the stage. The more things change . . .
Hair Blu-ray, Video Quality
Don't be concerned when the film starts. The opening sequence in Oklahoma isn't representative
of the 1080p AVC-encoded transfer. It's the title sequence, and it looks awful. The optical
printing process that was standard procedure for superimposing titles over a film image until
about ten years ago often "locked in" dirt and print damage, but
Hair is an extreme example. It's
almost as if someone went out of their way to find the grainiest, scratchiest dupe in the library for
the title shots.
The image improves dramatically once the titles end. Grain, though still present, is much better
controlled, and print damage, though still an occasional distraction, is a much less frequent
occurrence and far less severe when it occurs. The film had multiple cinematographers, of which
the lead was Forman's fellow Czech and frequent collaborator, Miroslav Ondrícek, who oversaw
the difficult task of lighting large groups of dancers and stunt people in challenging outdoor
locations such as Central Park. The Blu-ray lets you appreciate the extent of the crew's success.
The details of Ann Roth's elaborate costume designs are on full display, showcased against the
park's autumn leaves and winding paths. Black levels are sufficiently well-delineated that the
dance routine for "Colored Spade", which is performed by African-Americans in a tunnel at
night, plays out like the ironic dance of shadows that choreographer Twyla Tharp obviously
intended.
If there were motion or compression artifacts of any kind, they escaped my attention. Colors
appear to be accurate without oversaturation.
Hair uses a variety of palettes, including the earth
tones of Central Park in autumn, the blues and whites of the city in winter, the pastel dresses and
black tuxedos of the engagement party and, of course, the dull army green at Claude's base.
One of the film's recurrent visual strategies is to "discover" a character in a large landscape filled
with people, and the film did its crowd scenes the old-fashioned way, before CGI allowed crowds
to be added in post-production. Scenes of this nature never had the right impact on home video,
because there wasn't enough resolution to show a huge crowd in sufficient detail. But there is
now.
