Seeing this film 30 years after its release makes its intentions clearer then when I saw it back then, but it still fails to deliver fully.
One way of understanding "Shampoo" is as a movie about the '60s. It may be hard for some to believe today, but by 1975 the '60s, as a culturally time-stamped era, were over. Long over. The '60s really began with John F. Kennedy's assassination and ended with Richard Nixon's resignation (November 1963 to August 1974). The times and the atmosphere had changed by the mid-1970s, probably because the youth rebellion movement fractured as the Vietnam War wound down, and because many student radicals either "joined the human race" (as a Steely Dan song from the period put it), became more radical underground, or went off to live in the woods somewhere.
But what does "Shampoo" mean to say about those wild years? Warren Beatty's George character takes pains to note that he's not a hippie. And he's not. He's devoid of social and political values, and he says, late in the film, that he has no interest in fighting the Establishment. What he is interested in is casual sex -- and that certainly was part of the social upheaval of those years -- and he's interested in hair styles. But not much more. So is the film suggesting that in the end, the '60s were about soulless, casual sex and hair? It's not by accident that the film takes places in the 24-hour period in which Nixon becomes president. And the film was made just after (or just before?) Nixon resigned in disgrace. The TV clips of Nixon and his vice president Spiro Agnew expressing their hope for an open and inclusive government ring funny but sadly against what we know would follow. Is "Shampoo" saying that with all the partying and hedonism, the younger generation missed the boat and allowed Nixon to get elected? Interestingly, George doesn't vote, nor do we see any of his women friends voting, or even acknowledging the election.
Or is "Shampoo" about the shallow California lifestyle that was fully ripe by the mid-1970s? The Eagles' landmark album statement "Hotel California," which savaged the vapidity of that cocaine- and sex-addled culture, was released just a year after this film (see also Jackson Browne's song, "The Pretender"). It also occurs to me that Beatty may be satirizing himself -- or at least the version of himself that Carly Simon satirized in "You're So Vain" -- in this role.
"Shampoo" is worth seeing to understand the reassessment of the '60s that was already underway by the mid-1970s. But films like "Deer Hunter" and "Nashville" I think do it better. "Shampoo" falls short in that we can't really sympathize with Beatty's character, or with anyone else. The perspective we have is as distanced and as numb as George is in his relationships with women. There's lots of "fucking," as George puts it, but not much building tension or release achieved here.
In the end, it's not entirely clear what the film is saying about 1968, 1975 or about people like George.
One way of understanding "Shampoo" is as a movie about the '60s. It may be hard for some to believe today, but by 1975 the '60s, as a culturally time-stamped era, were over. Long over. The '60s really began with John F. Kennedy's assassination and ended with Richard Nixon's resignation (November 1963 to August 1974). The times and the atmosphere had changed by the mid-1970s, probably because the youth rebellion movement fractured as the Vietnam War wound down, and because many student radicals either "joined the human race" (as a Steely Dan song from the period put it), became more radical underground, or went off to live in the woods somewhere.
But what does "Shampoo" mean to say about those wild years? Warren Beatty's George character takes pains to note that he's not a hippie. And he's not. He's devoid of social and political values, and he says, late in the film, that he has no interest in fighting the Establishment. What he is interested in is casual sex -- and that certainly was part of the social upheaval of those years -- and he's interested in hair styles. But not much more. So is the film suggesting that in the end, the '60s were about soulless, casual sex and hair? It's not by accident that the film takes places in the 24-hour period in which Nixon becomes president. And the film was made just after (or just before?) Nixon resigned in disgrace. The TV clips of Nixon and his vice president Spiro Agnew expressing their hope for an open and inclusive government ring funny but sadly against what we know would follow. Is "Shampoo" saying that with all the partying and hedonism, the younger generation missed the boat and allowed Nixon to get elected? Interestingly, George doesn't vote, nor do we see any of his women friends voting, or even acknowledging the election.
Or is "Shampoo" about the shallow California lifestyle that was fully ripe by the mid-1970s? The Eagles' landmark album statement "Hotel California," which savaged the vapidity of that cocaine- and sex-addled culture, was released just a year after this film (see also Jackson Browne's song, "The Pretender"). It also occurs to me that Beatty may be satirizing himself -- or at least the version of himself that Carly Simon satirized in "You're So Vain" -- in this role.
"Shampoo" is worth seeing to understand the reassessment of the '60s that was already underway by the mid-1970s. But films like "Deer Hunter" and "Nashville" I think do it better. "Shampoo" falls short in that we can't really sympathize with Beatty's character, or with anyone else. The perspective we have is as distanced and as numb as George is in his relationships with women. There's lots of "fucking," as George puts it, but not much building tension or release achieved here.
In the end, it's not entirely clear what the film is saying about 1968, 1975 or about people like George.