Return of the Secaucus Seven (1980)

John Sayles directs "Return of the Seacaucus Seven". The plot? Seven friends are arrested in the 1960s for carrying marijuana to a peace protest. Ten years later, the friends hold a reunion at a New Hampshire summer home. Now all in their thirties, the friends reminisce about the past, reflect on their present lives and brood over long lost lovers.Look closer, though, and "Return" is about the death of a certain type of political activism, or rather, the morphing of counterculturalism into 1980's Reaganism. And so the film is filled with protest singers now shunned by the city, left wingers now working as speech-writers in a Democratic senator's office, radicals who are now conformists, and hippies who now find themselves fully ingrained "in the system". All of these characters are mirrored to another who seems frozen in time, desperately trying to preserve the past. The message: neoliberal capitalism won and the left's become hopelessly moribund.On another level, the "growing pains" of our cast mirror that of the film's director, John Sayles. Sayles has always been more of a writer than a director, and nowhere is this more evident than "Return of the Seacaucus Seven", Sayles' debut. Packed with talking heads, unconvincing dialogue, superficially sketched characters and ugly shots, "Return" is filmed theatre and has aged terribly.But this film was nevertheless an awkward phase Sayles had to go through. Between roughly 1989 and 1999, Sayles made a string of interesting films, but it would take him roughly the decade before this to hone his technique, gain experience and learn how to properly marry his love for prose to any kind of strong visual sensibility. Of course "Return" also hints at Sayles future career trajectory: that of an ineffectual radical, stuck in the past.7/10 – No one remembers it today, but this flick once shook up the indie circuit. Sayles directed, wrote, edited and acted in the film, raised 45,000 dollars to produce it and cast all the unknown actors himself. It would go on to inspire Lawrence Kasdan's "The Big Chill", and a string of other baby boomer movies and television shows about "thirty something year olds".

I will be completely frank upfront: I hate the Big Chill. I think it's vapid and boring. The only reason people still watch that superficial piece of trash is because the actors in it are eminently watchable. Every time I flip past it on AMC, I groan. How dare it have two of the finest actors of the last 30 years (William Hurt and Jeff Goldblum)? How dare it have Kevin Kline? How dare it, because of these terrific actors, take over the place in cinematic history rightfully held, at one time, by Return of the Secaucus 7? Usurper!Return of the Secaucus 7, the first film directed by Piranha scribe John Sayles, is a marvelous little gem that explores the lives of several friends and former radicals as they approach 30 and spend a weekend together in New Hampshire. There's not much plot to speak of, but there is a vibe. It's organic and lazy and real. I felt, watching this movie, that John Sayles set out to make a movie that mirrored a reunion weekend he once had with his friends: There was some barbecue, volleyball, and beer-drinking; there was some drama too but nothing, you know, major--minor spats and an unexpected sexual encounter or two but nothing much. That's basically the plot. Long segments revolve around montages of men sweatily playing basketball and men skinny- dipping. Shorter scenes occur in which characters have "deep" conversations. For the most part, though, there's some talk of politics, tales of olden times, and updates on what's happening now. Frankly, it feels like when my friends and I get together for a weekend. Consequently, since so little happens, if you don't like the characters, you're unlikely to appreciate the film. I found the characters interesting, human, and imperfect, so I like both them and the film. Visually, Return is uninspiring, but that doesn't really matter because of the vibe these characters give off. I don't mind that nothing is resolved (well, nothing happened that needed to be resolved). I don't mind that the dialogue doesn't "pop" the way Tarantino's or Mamet's does (it doesn't need to--the movie's about real people and not caricatures of conmen and gangsters). I liked the characters and the way the movie felt. It has a genial attitude and a worn-in feel. Return of the Secaucus 7 is far from Sayles's greatest work, but it's a great start.

In John Sayles debut, we mostly get talking, talking, and more talking. A great script can do amazing things for a low budget film. There really was not a point where I was disinterested in what the characters were saying.*Small spoiler* The tension between best friends JT and Jeff over Maura is great and culminated in a beautifully sequenced basketball game. You can feel the difficulty between them. I haven't seen the Big Chill. And after seeing this film I don't feel that it could top it. This movie should be an inspiration to all aspiring independent filmmakers.

Return of the Secaucus 7 is one of the primary harbingers of the excellence which can be found in modern independent film making. It was thoroughly entertaining and original, and I feel that "The Big Chill" was a tepid remake of this original vision. Thank you John Sayles.