American graffiti.

Hollywood films hold up a mirror to American society. It's equally true--that Hollywood films fail to reflect American society. Movies are clear windowpanes and opaque blinds, looking glasses and veils; they express and repress, elucidate and obscure, reveal and hide. Movies stubbornly tell the truth, and they constantly lie. The tabloidization of the U.S. is also about the sin of overweening pride. That's the problem of each of the characters. One is a soldier who went over to the North Koreans and doesn't know how to love his country. He's a guy who ended up on the wrong side of the cold war and has taken refuge in his poor damaged brain. Another character is a nuclear physicist who, as a result of. the horrors of his work, has reverted to being a 6-year-old.