[Between the Lines] is meant to be a tale of deradicalization, of how a group of bright, undisciplined but idealistic kids who during the sixties put out a paper with some genuine bite to it … decline into slackness, indifference, jadedness, selling out. To make any sense, the action should be situated some eight years back, which is where, as I understand, the original scenario placed it. Updated to 1977, the movie taunts us with an unfillable lacuna: What kept these kids going till this day? Why is dissolution setting in now? Why haven't they already gotten over and beyond their disenchantment?

The film records, with however questionable accuracy, a particular moment of time, and misplaces it; we feel that the kids might just as well be bemoaning the death of Pancho Villa. More troublesome yet is that we are not given a sense of anyone's former power…. We do...