Word: hymns
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...gathered around the altar for the ordination of a priest. Instead of the traditional ecclesiastical garb, the moustached young man in their midst wore a psychedelic chasuble festooned with yarn balls and tinkling bells. In the background, a group called Martha's Laundry blasted out rock settings of hymn tunes...
Solos were generously distributed and inevitably some voices proved less fortunate standing alone than others. One baritone in particular had egregious difficulties with intonation, singing either sharp or totally out of tune. Nonetheless he more than redeemed himself in Akh, Ty Step Shirokaja, that emotionally charged and typically Russian hymn to the Volga River. By and large the soloists were excellent and served less to highlight particular individuals than to underscore the power and expertise of the group as a whole...
...effects of the war on daily life, rather than wasting time shooting interviews with Hanoi official-dom. Other baldly ideological sequences pall, such as scenes of marching North Vietnamese soldiers (there is "no conscription" in North Vietnam, maintains Greene) striding forward to the tunes of the Liberation Hymn of South Vietnam...
...integrate scene changes into the action is particularly fortunate, given that Mayer's construction calls for tag lines, blackouts, and the immediate appearance of a next scene. Mayer's sense here borders on the cinematographic: one transition hinges on sound (a boisterous marching song fades into a church hymn), others on highly graphic contrasts of light and mood...
History may yet record these sweet reflections less as a hymn to quietude than as the last muffled cry of the ostrich as its mouth fills up with sand...