Hair [Blu-ray] Reviews

Some stories are clearly in and of their time and others transcend it. Hair, the “American Tribal Love-Rock Musical” (as it was so billed during its original four year Broadway run) was initially produced during an era of free love, flower power, and counterculture revolution. It was the first rock music score that managed to catch fire on Broadway, and its almost free-form amalgamation of music and vague storytelling featured casual nudity (the cast was free to doff clothes at the end of the first act or not as the spirit moved them) and a score that featured almost thirty songs. But by the time of its 1979 movie version, the music and themes had become passé. No amount of clever filming could recapture that lightning-in-a-bottle moment when Hair first exploded into the American consciousness. Now more than thirty years removed from the film’s premiere, the movie plays as a definite period piece, a very effective if somewhat flawed look at a generation of young people who opposed not only war but the restrictions of a buttoned-up society, and the images that director Milos Forman puts together with that sometimes grating and sometimes exhilarating score certainly catch one’s attention and stay seared in the memory. Beyond its rudimentary narrative, Hair is a movie of memorable sights and sounds.

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