The film focuses on student protests of government policies in the Vietnam War, clashes between students and police, and the responses of politicians and the public to the turmoil.[5] Among the major events included is the Sterling Hall bombing. Intended to destroy the Army Math Research Center in the building, the bombing also caused massive destruction to other parts of the building, resulting in the death of a physics researcher, Robert Fassnacht, who was not involved in the Army Math Research Center. Bomber Karleton Armstrong, brother of Dwight Armstrong, is interviewed for the film, as is Paul Soglin, an antiwar leader who went on to be mayor of Madison.
Viewing the film after its recent restoration, Peter Canby writes in The New Yorker:
The film covers the period from 1963—when the earliest demonstrators wore jackets and ties, in some cases smoked pipes, and attended teach-ins—to 1973. Along the way, there is extensive footage from dramatic Madison developments, including a police attack on antiwar demonstrators who had seized a campus building to protest the visit of Dow Chemical recruiters to campus. (Dow was the maker of napalm.) In that episode, the police clubbed—pretty much unprovoked—anyone they could get their hands on. In an unintentionally humorous moment, captured on film, a sociology professor named Maurice Zeitlin remembers students rushing in and asking him to talk sense to the police. Zeitlin runs out of his office, only to be clubbed from behind.[9]
