Medium Cool

I found myself almost shocked at the craftiness of this film. Coming from film school, it sometimes seems that our modern ideas of more liberalized or at least non-commercial media are new ones. Medium Cool proves that people were thinking that way for quite some time. The perspectives of both an “average” American single mother and an egotistical, apathetic cameraman for the local news lends a multilayered view on the times. We get to see these characters’ simultaneous reactions to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and how a man who works for the news is completely out of touch with the people he is providing the news for, and does it only because, he says, “God, I love film.” The sheer pretentiousness of that line is so fitting for such a self-involved character.