The 60's part II

The second part of the film starts with the march against the war in the train. In this part it is clearly seen how Kenny doesn’t really care for people’s safety but for the cause he is fighting for. He tells people to stay on the tracks because the train was going to stop but the train never did. Sarah develops certain admiration towards Kenny because of his bravery since he stayed on the tracks till the last minute. The next scene presents the reverend William with his son Emmet painting. Here Emmet establishes how he does not agree with his father’s method of making a statement having to endure the outrageousness of white people against colored people. Emmet asks his father “What do we ever get from turning the other cheek?” because he didn’t understand how would having to endure all of that torture would help. Later on a more important situation happens, the film presents two white police officers about to arrest a colored man because he was drunk. The mother of the drunken man pushes him and accidentally hits the police officer. Commotion starts to develop as the people watching what was happening see how the other officer pushed the woman away. Next thing you know people start breaking windows and robbings stores. Emmet got involved in all of this chaos and was a victim of pure pressure. When his father finds him he takes the gun that Emmet had and a cop sees him with the gun and shoots him. This resembles many situations that usually happen Puerto Rico where the police acts and then ask and where many innocent people have to pay the price of ignorant police officers who act by impulse and not by righteousness. Specially here where the officer probably acted this way because the man that had a gun was colored. Here in Puerto Rico this could happen with a police man and an armed man that comes from a residential. The cop would be prejudiced because the person comes from a place like that and would assume that his next action would be to shoot him. I remember something that happened in PuerTO Rico once where a police officer shot various time a man that was on the floor defenseless. It is true that the man was running away from the police but once the police officers had him there was no need to shoot him. In this case the police man acted on impulse and fear. And this can resemble what happened in the movie with Emmet’s father, the officer that shot him was scared and acted on impulse. After the incident Emmet forms part of the hippie revolution and this is how he meets Katie. Emmet probably forms part of this revolution not because he is specifically against the war but because he needed an escape from all the things that he had been through.

Next it is shown how Michael had developed an opinion of his own about the war and it went against what his father believed, his father tells him that if he keeps it up he can no longer live on the same house, something very close to what happened to Kate. Her father’s impulsive way of thinking pushed her away until she decided to run away. Michael then attends to a march against the war in The Pentagon where he impresses Sarah by preventing turmoil between the military and the protestants, where people could have been hurt. This is where the phrase “we are not against the soldiers, we are against the war” takes place. After the manifestation Michael tries to tell Sarah how Kenny doesn’t care about the security of people but only of the cause and how he really acts carelessly. This concern that Michael has about Kenny’s behavior is because Kenny is a character that has strong ideals but as the plot develops his ideals grow even greater than himself and slowly start to consume him. Later on in the story, the film presents how this consumption puts an end to him. After all the commotion in the march at The Pentagon Michael starts making campaign for G. Mc Carthy and goes people to people encouraging them to sign petitions against the war. Michael even encourages his own mother to sign one. But when Bill, the father, comes home she is hesitant to do so, until he starts to read the letter that came from Brian and starts to brag about how Brian is doing well in war. Here Mary gets the courage to speak her mind and signs the petition and tells her husband that as she respects his opinions she expected that he respected hers as well. Mean while Kate’s child, Rainbow, gets sick and Kate doesn’t have money to get medicine, so she decides to dace for money but she gets robed and all hope is taken away from her, which leaves her with the desperate decision to call home for help. Here the second part ends.