Helen, a former stay-at-home widowed single mother spreads her wings and becomes an activist filmmaker. One of her daughters Karen seeks a new direction in life by having a baby, while her other daughter Elizabeth has abandoned husband and children in search of herself. A woman just released from jail becomes an advocate for female prisoners. Peter, a man just out of prison after a stint for transporting draft-dodgers across the border finds himself numb to outside life and ventures into the desert in search of a new kind of existence. A couple who have raised their child in a commune venture to the city in search of a less isolated yet still communal existence, while a father wants to reconnect on a familial with his toddler son who has been largely raised communally. And Terry, a GI with debts and anger issues, is unable to accept the hospitality of communal roommates and chooses instead to be a drifter (and occasional burglar). These are some of the inhabitants of Robert Kramer's and John Douglas' sprawling yet intimate narrative of post-sixties life where support groups have eroded and communes - both in the city and the country - have become almost isolationist, and many of the characters try to stay true to their beliefs while acting on them differently with uncertain degrees of success. Some are looking inwards (Karen and Elizabeth have come to understand the situation their mother was left in when her husband was killed in WWII, while Helen envies their ability to act on their feelings), while others like Peter look beyond what they once knew: after learning that Terry has been killed, his potential roommates reflect on their inability to help him and his isolation while one of them comments that they are equally isolated by choosing to be with people who are the same as they are, and trying to convert other people to their lifestyle (Terry could not even consider sharing his burdens - financial and emotional - with them despite their assurances that they would find a way to help him). The 3+ hour running time may seem daunting, but it is an absorbing viewing (minus the birth footage). The acting is sometimes stiff but earnest and dialogue involving (it is almost easy to forget that this is a scripted and half-improvised film until the camera documents an attempted rape without intervention, and then intercuts with the growing awareness of the victim's would-be rescuer). The non-linear editing style of some sequences involving Peter's spiritual journey and Terry's drifting horrors - as well as other explosions of sudden violence - recall less Nicholas Roeg and more Donald Cammell (a la PERFORMANCE and WHITE OF THE EYE), but John Douglas' and Robert Kramer's narrative is more exploratory than symbolic with some threads left completely open and others (like Karen's childbirth which closes the film) optimistic but uncertain.