HERBERT'S HIPPOPOTAMUS
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1997 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): **
HERBERT'S HIPPOPOTAMUS is not kid's show, no matter how silly the title sounds. (The derivation of the title is less interesting than you might suspect.) The film is a serious documentary that examines radical Professor Herbert Marcuse's fight against the University of California system. I saw the film as part of San Jose's Cinequest film festival.
The documentary is set in the late 1960s and early 1970s with videos of several different University of California campuses, but with most of the film set in San Diego where Professor Marcuse taught. (Since I was a grad student at Berkeley at the time, I must admit my eye was actively scanning the crowds there looking for my own image. I do not believe I appear in the film, but then again, perhaps one of those pixels is me.)
You may remember Marcuse. He was Angela Davis's friend and mentor. He was also a target of hatred at the time with his opponents accusing him of being a Communist. For the record, Davis did join the Communist party, but Marcuse never did. The documentary film footage of him shows him as an assertive, but reasonable sage. There is a long sequence of a reporter trying to get Marcuse to say that he endorsed violence. He was a skillful verbal fencer and never did let the reporter put words in his mouth.
Documentarian Paul Alexander Juutilainen is effective at pulling out old clips to make his points. Reagan is shown as a buffoon, and the filmmaker has interviews of people denigrating Reagan and the then UCSD Chancellor McGill. They accuse them of everything including being ugly.
The documentary is one-sided, which is fine -- most are, but I wish it were better constructed. The clips are categorized into chapters, and yet they seem randomly organized. I know that the documentarian wanted me to empathize with Marcuse and rage against the system as embodied in then Governor Reagan, but I could have gotten that by reading the abstract.
There are two things I will remember. First, the people in the small audience after the film seemed to share a single opinion. As one guy said, anyone who has read Marcuse and understood him, must agree with him. He claimed that those who do not agree with Marcuse must not understand him. This is a simplistic view that I don't buy.
Second, there is a scene in which an army recruiter has been invited to speak to the UCSD students, and the students take a vote on whether to allow him to talk. The First Amendment wins the vote by a ten to one margin. So what do the students who lost the vote and want to deny this man his Constitutional rights then yell to drown him out? "Fascist!" I find this to be ironic.
HERBERT'S HIPPOPOTAMUS runs 1:09. It is not rated, but would be PG for the themes discussed. It would be fine for any kid old enough to be interested. Although it is a close call, the film is not cohesive enough for me to be able to recommend it. I give it **.
**** = A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = Totally and painfully unbearable picture.
REVIEW WRITTEN ON: February 3, 1997
Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.
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