We Can't Go Home Again

Plot Summary

Restored and reconstructed from its 1973 Cannes version, legendary director Nicholas Ray’s experimental masterpiece WE CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN embodies the director’s practice of filmmaking as a “communal way of life.” Made with his college students in upstate New York, the film features Ray as mentor, friend, and reference point to his students and their stories of love, sex, rebellion, and lost innocence. With its expressionistic colorization, the film exemplifies Ray’s groundbreaking approach to multiple-image storytelling, providing a unique, almost anthropological perspective in recording the “history, progress, manners, morals, and mores of everyday life” at a critical moment in 1970s America.