Patton Oswalt, Martin Scorsese, Seth Rogen, and others analyze 1975 as a key cultural and historical turning point.
In the opening minutes of Netflix's Breakdown: 1975, Oliver Stone pulls out a piece of lined paper and enthusiastically begins reading a list of his favorite films, presumably from 1975, given the title of Morgan Neville's documentary and the themes already established by Jodie Foster's narration.
Director: Morgan Neville
Stars: Jodie Foster, Wesley Morris, Todd Boyd
All goes well for a while, until he gets to All the President's Men and Network.
It's here that film scholars and those with an obsessive attention to detail will notice a very, very obvious problem: both All the President's Men and Network were released in 1976. This inaccuracy will not dissipate over the next hour and a half.
Breakdown: 1975 is full of excellent snippets and peppered with insightful observations, but it's a truly strange documentary, likely appealing to viewers with a superficial interest in history or film, but exasperating for anyone seeking a minimally rigorous explanation.
Half of the interviewees and half of Foster's poorly written narration ("Were we living the American dream or an American nightmare?") act as if the documentary is actually focused on 1975 and the impressive selection of films released in that specific year: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dog Day Afternoon, Nashville, Jaws, and many more.
However, just as often, Breakdown: 1975 treats the so concretely defined concept of "1975"—a year that runs from January 1, 1975 to December 31, 1975, in case there was any doubt—as a construct, a nebulous midpoint between the end of Watergate and the American Bicentennial.
It's a choice that makes sense on a broad thematic level, and even more so on a cinematic level; In terms of cinematic years, 1975 was very good, but it wasn't necessarily better than 1976 and doesn't come close to 1974, so it suits Neville and his panel of experts to be able to discuss Network, All the President's Men, Taxi Driver, The Conversation, Chinatown, and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore as an extra bonus that doesn't belong to 1975.
In practice, however, this undermines the title's relatively clear and concise promise, resulting in an easily scattered project that barely has time to delve into any topic, addressing its main ideas unconvincingly (and sometimes with questionable accuracy).
The overall thesis—difficult to refute on its own merits—is that the period between Watergate and the Bicentennial was one of tremendous cynicism and disillusionment in the United States (despite the lack of specificity in the title, Breakdown: 1975 defines 1975 as an exclusively American phenomenon). Richard Nixon had resigned but had been pardoned. Saigon fell. Oil prices skyrocketed.
Then many other things happened or were about to happen. There were the competing pressures to pass and defeat the Equal Rights Amendment. Gerald Ford survived two assassination attempts in one month. We were on the cusp of the personal computer revolution and the rise of Ronald Reagan and a new conservatism. It was the end of the counterculture and the birth of the Me Generation.
As Foster's narration puts it, in one of dozens of cringe-worthy phrases, "For some, the era felt like a disco ball, with hundreds of little selves spinning around it."
People, the documentary tells us, were asking themselves, "Is America still working?" And so were the movies!
Neville has assembled a solid group of experts and commentators, including filmmakers like Martin Scorsese—see Mr. Scorsese on Apple for better Scorsese content—and Nashville screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury; stars of the era like Ellen Burstyn and Albert Brooks; Modern stars/enthusiasts like Seth Rogen, Patton Oswalt, and Josh Brolin; historians like Rick Perlstein; critics like Wesley Morris; academics like Todd Boyd of USC; and general cultural observers like Frank Rich and Kurt Anderson are all featured. Former Variety editor Peter Bart is also included, but despite having worked as a studio executive during that period, neither he nor the documentary offers any real insight into the industry.
Once you accept that, according to this documentary, a 1975 film is any film released in 1975, produced in 1975, influenced by anything that happened between 1974 and 1976, released in 1974 but perhaps seen in second-run theaters in 1975, or even predating the Watergate scandal but which the filmmakers hope won't matter, Breakdown: 1975 makes compelling arguments for why it was a particularly fertile time for certain genres, from the conspiracy thriller to the vigilante drama.
It becomes far less convincing when making other connections. Were there a lot of films released in 1975 with bleak endings, perhaps reflecting the mood of the country? Sure. But once you're five years removed from Midnight Cowboy, Bonnie and Clyde, and Easy Rider, what's particularly "1975" about the "pessimism"? And yes, there were a lot of disaster movies during this period, which definitely reflected a certain distrust of institutions. But when you're talking about The Poseidon Adventure, released in 1972 and based on a 1969 novel, the argument becomes ahistorical. And while I understand including Richard Pryor and blaxploitation in the conversation because, as Morris points out, most of the genres that fit the era and theme are notably lacking in Black voices, using Cooley High as the representative blaxploitation film of 1975 instead of Sheba, Baby or Dolemite is very strange.
I could list a nearly endless list of favorite films from 1975 that aren't even mentioned or only appear in two snippets in a context that makes very little sense. But hey, at least we get several minutes dedicated to the 1973 adaptation of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which has some relevance, but appears here more as a "Wow, what a weird thing we made popular back then." With almost nothing receiving the depth it deserves, Breakdown: 1975 gives the impression of following a checklist, even if the connective tissue between the ideas is practically nonexistent. Sure, it acknowledges the existence of television by mentioning the series All in the Family, but absolutely nothing else, except, for some reason, ABC's Wonder Woman, used to show clips of Lynda Carter stopping bullets as a manifestation of feminism, but without any further exploration of the topic.
The checklist approach at least briefly mentions many genuinely good films from the era, though it's hard to tell which of them receive enough attention to entice viewers. It's even harder to tell how many of those films, if any, will be available on Netflix (at least before a deal with Warner Bros. is finalized).
It's a shame that so many topics are treated so superficially, because the talking heads are good, and many of their quick comments are entertaining. My favorite part is when they try to connect Jaws to the themes discussed earlier in the documentary, only to conclude with Sam Wasson's observation that "It's a movie about nothing." I disagree, but I'm not sure he actually believes that either, which is part of the fun of the analysis.
If you didn't know that Breakdown: 1975 came from an Oscar-winning filmmaker, you might think it was a video essay by a film student with very well-connected friends. If I were the teaching assistant grading that video essay, I'd probably give it a B-/C+ with the comment: "Entertaining and interesting, but lacking focus and depth."
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