Give the world a dance Claude Hooper Bukowski, a young farmer from Oklahoma, comes to New York, where on the first day he meets a commune of hippies, whose inadequate behavior makes a lasting impression on him. The “Children of Flowers” who welcome the advent of the Aquarius era are trying to find true liberation, ignoring the stereotypes that are rooted in society.
They profess free love as an alternative to the Vietnam War, and the famous exhortation “Make love, not war” is expressed in deeds, not in words. Influenced by “progressive ideas” of the denial of bourgeois values (the living embodiment of which is for Claude the most active hippa George Berger), the wild farmer, meanwhile, is sincerely fond of the aristocrat Sheila – the daughter of a large financier.
After a few fun and crazy days in New York, Claude is drafted into the military. During the military training he is visited by George and Sheila. In order to get away with Sheila, George invites Claude to change clothes. At this time, an urgent collection is announced, and recruits, including George, dressed in Claude's uniform, are sent to Vietnam. In the final shots, a giant extra of fifteen thousand people sings in chorus: “Let the sun rise.”
Only 12 years after the Broadway premiere, Foreman took up the adaptation of one of the main theatrical sensations of the late 1960s - the first rock musical in the history. The reason for such a long delay is explained, among other things, by the search for an adequate form, the desire to find a “logical justification” for songs and dances that could quite naturally look on the stage, but would contradict the realistic nature of cinema.
For Foreman, solving this problem in the musical genre was as important as it was for Bob Foss. Despite the fact that many believed that the time for the film adaptation of this musical was irrevocably gone, the picture appeared at the very period when the Vietnamese syndrome was particularly acute in the United States.
It was at this time that the famous anti-war trilogy appeared - Homecoming, Deer Hunter (both 1978) and Apocalypse Now (1979). And although Hair combines several topical themes of the late 1960s – from free love to student unrest, addressing the problem of Vietnam does not contradict placing the film in the context of a pacifist direction.
As Foreman suggested, the tragic military theme helps the organic perception of musical scenes, since in a conversation about life and death such convention does not seem deliberate. In addition to the director, a considerable merit in this belongs to the composer Galt McDermot, the authors of the script and song lyrics - James Reido and Jerome Ragney, choreographer Tweila Tharp and cameraman Miroslav Ondřiček, whose invaluable contribution to this integral musical was not recognized by the American Academy.