MovieChat Forums > Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 (2008) Discussion > Best evocation of the Sixties I have see...

Best evocation of the Sixties I have seen

posted 13 years ago by edthird
3 replies | jump to latest

I'm a few years younger than the Harvard and Yale players (I was a freshman in November 1968 at another Ivy League school, still all-male that fall). This is the most accurate, true-to-life evocation of the Sixties I've ever seen. So much of what is written and aired about life on college campuses at that time is cartoonish and false. These are real people, just like me and my classmates. What's most revelatory and authentic is that so many of the athletes were from modest socio-economic backgrounds, as were most of my classmates -- not preppy rich kids from country clubs and boarding schools, as the Ivy League is so often and so inaccurately depicted. Yes, there were those, but they were very much the minority.

[–] 13 years ago

[deleted]

[–] antimatter33 12 years ago

Well said!

Strange - I had the distinct feeling that God was punishing Yale for what the Bush administration was going to be doing 35 years later :)

The most winning personality is dour Yale linebacker Mike Bouscaren, who does in fact have that upper crust attitude of say George Plimpton, who acts somehow as the moral center of the film. I found myself grinning from ear to ear while listening to him.

If you love football, then this film is a near religious experience. When the Yale fans are yelling "HOLD THAT LINE!" with Harvard on the 6 yard line with 13 seconds left, it seems like an echo from the distant past, when college football was played by everyday students, and political quagmires and generational catastrophes like Vietnam and Iraq were unimaginable.

-drl

[–] dddmi7-1 12 years ago

Let's all hold hands and sing Cumbaya or we are the world, smoke a joint, and remember the 60s! Sad, unimaginative, liberal myopic view of the 1960s. I remember the great later part of the 1960s. I especially enjoyed when all the peace-loving people from the 60s rioted in my neighborhood and we were forced to leave our house 2 hours later. We never returned. Our nice peaceful middle-class neighborhood was turned into a slum overnight. Yes, I have fond memories of the late 1960s. It must have been nice to be sitting in a dorm in New Haven or Cambridge and plan sit-ins or protests. A nice smelly pile of liberal bias.
But what would I know, I'm only a retired veteran who has had liberals spit vile at my face in the last 10 years just because my opinion differs from theirs.

So no, not everybody experienced free love and protested the war in 1968.

The only thing I remember from 1968 is the Tigers won the world series!

Harvard vs. Yale wasn't on our radar!