Director: John Sayles
Year Released: 1980
Rating: 3.0
A very close-knit group of friends (along with some love interests) decide to have a reunion and enjoy each other's company - the plot is minimal, because the picture is essentially a meditation on what it means to grow older and leave one's youth behind. Amateur performances aside, I found this to be very melancholy but carefully observed - Sayles, who was in his late twenties when he made this and had to have been feeling the same concern over leaving those precious (and often wasted) days behind him. I find it of particular interest that the title seven were politically charged in their younger incarnations - now that they're approaching 30, they appear to be trying to gain some kind of stability in life (at least two of them are apparently teachers!) - and how it's like the old adage (attributed to Churchill) about liberals and conservatives and how if you haven't turned the former when you're young you have no heart, but if you haven't become the latter by the time you get older, you have no brain.
