"I realized our time of growing up together was over…”
The Story:
Class valedictorian Mary Beth (Lucy Deakins) narrates the story of the “last days of paradise” in 1964, when she and her friends graduated high school and were thrust into the tumultuous world of adulthood. As everyone’s favorite local dive (Pop’s) prepares to shut down and local DJ legend “The Beard” howls on AM airwaves for the last time, the large group of friends deal with their own personal issues as the Vietnam conflict and racial tensions begin to spiral out of control.
The Review:
The Review:
There Goes My Baby is an almost elegiac ode not only to the youth of its characters, but also the innocence of a nation. It relies on stark, metonymic imagery to foreshadow the coming devastation for both. The most powerful of these images is that of Pop’s neon paradise, which is standing in the shadow of the wrecking ball (it’ll soon give way to a soulless shopping mall). Despite the guillotine hanging over its head, it and its patrons continue to rock the night away in defiance, which gives you a good idea of what this film is about. Its large ensemble cast and nostalgic stylings will of course conjure up comparisons to American Graffiti; however, whereas that film was like approaching the edge of uncertainty, There Goes My Baby is like being shoved over that cliff and desperately trying to cling to it. Hindsight and history books tell us that America was about to tumble down the side of a precipitous mountain, and that dreadful fall imminent.
The opening shots get fired here, though, as the specter of Vietnam emerges; so too does the unjust nature of that conflict, which is represented by one of the student’s (Sean Greenblot) protests, which are met with violence. Another student (Ricky Schroder) is set to report for duty the next day and has anxieties, despite everyone’s reassurances that it’s just a “police action.” Comparisons to the glory of World War II also fall on deaf ears, and all of these reassurances seem absurd since audiences 40 years removed know the truth. A similar sort of melancholic realization emerges when we hear the dreams of Sunshine (Kelli Williams), who plans on heading to San Francisco, where there will be peace, love, and flowers in everyone’s hair (if only it were that easy). And then there’s the Watts Riots, which allows this film to capture what Lucas’s film couldn’t: the African American experience, which is presented as a painful and inexplicable existence. Echoes of Do the Right Thing swirl as we’re presented images of burning shops and streets; one of the students is Calvin (Kenneth Ransom), who has been raised with privilege and will be attending Princeton. His conflicts are obvious--considered an “Uncle Tom” by his own people and not fully understood by the whites he associates with, he’s stuck somewhere in between.
That’s where most of the characters find themselves, of course. The chaotic historical events serve as a backdrop to other personal turmoil, which is plentiful. Noah Wylie is the class’s aspiring write and indignant sage who sees the madness surrounding him and tries to find a way to explain the inexplicable. His buddy (Dermot Mulroney) intends to go on the road to find himself, but might be slowed down by an unexpected pregnancy. Another girl (Jill Schoelen) dreams of being a pop star. Many of them deal with the usual teenage conflicts in the form of oblivious parents and authority figures (though Paul Gleason does show up in a delightful mentor role far removed from his definitive role of “The Bull” in The Breakfast Club). The sheer amount of conflict at work here is arduous, but somehow it does capture the chaos of growing up. While these are the stories and problems of many, it works as the collective, tumultuous unconscious of the teenage mind that’s struggling to move on to adulthood. It functions especially well as a coming-of-age film because the severity of the conflicts matures in a hurry. When we first meet the students, they’re more concerned with defying school authority in summer school and lamenting unrequited love; by the end, they’ve participated in riots and have the clear notion that they must move on somehow, some way.
There Goes My Baby is a pretty amazing diamond in the rough. Intended for release in 1991, it sat on the shelves due to beleaguered distributor Orion, and it seemingly never found an audience. It does have some flaws that keep it from being perfect--it’s too short, which gives some of its elements a superficial feeling and certainly lacks subtlety. But those are admirable failings; there is clear ambition and intent here to craft a definitive coming-of-age tale that captures the uncertainty and terror of late adolescence. Of course, it also works because we as an audience are pretty certain of the ominous events to come; as we watch, we might not know how it’s going to work out for each specific character, but that impending guillotine looms at all times. You watch anticipating a heartbreak that a generation already lived, so we believe it when Mary Beth wistfully looks back and declares these were the best days of their lives. She wonders how the world will get by without a place like Pop’s, and the film’s answer to that question is a bit surprising. Despite all the foreboding, there’s also the realization that life goes on--sometimes for better or worse, but mostly for the better. It’d just be a little bit easier if we could still bask in the glow of Pop’s and bop along with the Drifters. (Brett G.)
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