The War at Home.

• Author: ROTHENBERG, ROBERT S.
• Position: Review

The War at Home First Run Features / 100 minutes / $29.95

The unpopular Vietnam War triggered a climate of political activism in the 1960s and early 1970s that nearly tore the nation apart. One of the hotbeds of protest was the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where peaceful demonstrations escalated into vicious police vs. students bloody confrontations and culminated in the bombing of a campus building where military research was being done.

This Academy Award-nominated documentary uses the university as a microcosm of the anti-war movement, with testimony from former students, including Paul Soglin, a campus activist who went on to become mayor of Madison; police and National Guard officers; politicians; and citizens of Madison, many of them parents of involved students. Flickering across the screen are the mostly familiar faces of the Vietnam era: Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon; Vice Pres. Hubert Humphrey; Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara; Senators Ted Kennedy, Wayne Morse, and Gaylord Nelson; and Chicago...