Educational Media Reviews Online

Small wonder that 1968 is often described, and again in this documentary's subtitle, as the year that shaped a generation. In the brief twelve months of this anno mirabilis -- or rather miserabilis (pace Elizabeth II) -- there happened: the ongoing war in Vietnam, including the Tet Offensive; the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the subsequent violent uprisings in the country's ghettos; the Columbia University student revolt (which presaged the May '68 student revolt in Paris and the less well known but far more brutal student massacre, the "Night of Sorrow," that took place in Mexico City just before the opening of the Olympic Games); the abrupt termination of "Prague Spring" by the invasion of Soviet tanks; the assassination of Robert Kennedy; and the "police riot" during the Democratic Convention in Chicago -- to name but the more cataclysmic events. The year also saw the brief, brilliant, doomed campaign for the presidency of Senator Eugene McCarthy on a courageous anti-war platform; the sad twilight of the career of Hubert H. Humphrey; and the resurrection from political oblivion of Richard M. Nixon.

Yet despite or because of these mainly tragic occurrences, 1968 proved to be, in the words of Todd Gitlin, "the cusp between the hope and the rage" -- the year in which a new universal consciousness emerged and evolved, even as the Nixon years commenced, and which continues to be strongly present in the culture of our own day. The documentary, narrated by NPR's Noah Adams, brings many of these events vividly to life via a freight train of powerfully charged images -- at the same time that it finds a measure of coherence in the material by intelligently organizing the year into eight segments detailing its most significant episodes. Added to the documentary images themselves is contemporary commentary by some important participants and observers of the time -- among them, Barbara Ehrenreich, Todd Gitlin, Tom Hayden, Pat Buchanan, Carlos Fuentes and Robert Bork (note the effort to achieve a balance of political opinions). The original music on the soundtrack effectively underscores the significance of the events we're watching. Far better than any other video chronicling the same year -- for example, the one in the series, "The Fabulous 60's", narrated by Peter Jennings -- 1968: The Year That Shaped A Generation depicts in bold relief events of enduring historical import. It's the film that should be seen by every class on the war in Vietnam and on American culture and society.