BEEN DOWN SO LONG IT LOOKS LIKE UP TO ME

US, 1971, 90 minutes, Colour.
Barry Primus, Susan Tyrell, Raul Julia, Bruce Davison.
Directed by Jeffrey Young.

Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me received very little commercial release. It is very much in the atmosphere of the late 1960s and early '70s protest (The Strawberry Statement, R.P.M., Getting Straight etc.). However, the characters and the momentum of the narrative are not particularly gripping and so the film does not draw its audience into itself and its issues.

The film was based on a novel by Richard Farina and was set in the late '50s, a discontented academic rebelling against academia and American society in the beat generation, Jack Kerouac style. Already, this material was dated when the film was made with the greater urgency of the '60s civil rights movements and Vietnam protest.

Barry Primus portrays the central character and there is interesting support from such character actors as Bruce Davison and Susan Tyrell. The film in its frankness and language echoes the changing styles of American cinema in the early '70s. There is a focus on a variety of campus characters, rebellion against administration and academics, against the wealthy young men and their snobbery in the university colleges in the late '50s, the introduction to drug culture, an emphasis on permissive sexuality (with which the film opens). There are some imaginative sequences of drug hallucination material especially to do with art. There are religious themes, focus on racial themes especially to do with Indians, and questions about moral stances, integrity, virginity etc.

The film is of historic interest in the context of the 1960s, early '70s protest films.