The War at Home

Rating:
Summary: And the Beat Goes On
Review: I was a graduate student at the UW/Madison during the period that this film covers. It shows the history and development of the anti-war movement with a great deal of accuracy. (Not perfectly accurate, but very close.)

Nothing could adequately portray the frustration, anger and betrayal felt by many students and faculty as the war dragged on, no matter what they did, and no matter how many died in Viet-Nam. This was also the period of the spread of the war to Cambodia, the assassination of Martin Luther King, the Chicago Democratic Convention Police Riots, and the Kent State killintgs. Considering all of this, the film does an excellent job of not becoming bogged down in emotion, yet letting the viewer know that it is there.

The tragic bombing of the Army Math Research Center by 4 angry but naive students put a terrible pall on peace activites in Madison, as everyone was horrified by the death of a graduate student who was in the building. However, it did not end the movement, and eventually peace was achieved.

An extremely timely film today (3/24/03), when many of the same people (and many others as well) have felt in necessary after more than 30 years to return to the streets and their communities to protest another war.

I have found this film very moving personally, but have also found it very useful as a teacher, to give my students a feeling for what that time was like, what some of the issues were, and how people felt, acted, and re-acted.

Rating:
Summary: The War at Home: History at it's Darkest
Review: The War at Home is a moving story about America's turbulent mid-decades. It is a documentary of Madison, Wisconsin's infamous ROTC bombing, an event overshadowed by the Kent-State massacre. In 1969, after riots swept Madison, several students from University of Wisconsin Madison set off a bomb in the army's mathematics labratory. They then proceeded to hijack a plane and drop a dud-bomb on the army's Badger ammunition plant in Baraboo, Wisconsin. The War at Home is the moving story of the anti-war riots leading up to the ROTC bombing, and the hunt for the suspects of the bombing. Where were you?