Verite American films from the 70s incite a feeling of nostalgia in me that might best be compared to Eliot’s cruel April. For one thing, it was the time of my own transition from boy to man. And in those budding sensations, those erotic exploration, my own world paralled those of the larger society.
For, while the “sexual revolution” occurred in the hothouse of 60s counterculture, it seems as though the following decade saw these primal urges became part of the mainstream, funneled into common discourse, no longer as shocking as they were titillating, still novel enough to excite, yet not new.
Open discussions of sexuality no longer broke barriers; experimentation was no longer as much a radical reaction as it was part of a more widely accepted movement toward self-actualization. Pornography hit the mainstream with “Deep Throat” and “Behind the Green Door.” Key parties came to the suburbs.
In this environment, Mike Nichols’ Carnal Knowledge was a smart, thoughtful foray into the world of how men saw women, as represented by the unlikely duo of Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) and Sandy (Art Garfunkel), college roommates at a tony New England college who span the spectrum of male ignorance. Sandy knows almost nothing about women, dating, and sex, and is not afraid to admit it. Jonathan, a Lothario without scruples, shows a bravado that masks his own cluelessness.
Ultimately, both paths prove less than successful. Sandy’s lack of confidence and self-knowledge dooms his relationships with Susan (Candice Bergen) and Cindy, an opportunistic manipulator. Both women betray him with Jonathan, showing their own inability to reconcile the yin and yang, responsible vs. daring, that defines the two men.
Jonathan’s progress increasingly highlights his narcissism. When he finds a woman who meets his physical requirements in Bobbie (Ann-Margret), he finds fault with her anyway, making it clear that his problem finding a compatible woman lies with him, not the women.
Ultimately, the only women who will inhabit Jonathan’s delusional world of self-love are those who are paid to do so. And Sandy’s comment about his new young lover, that “she knows worlds which I cannot begin to touch yet” leaves us ambivalent regarding his own growth. Is he suggesting that they share a deep communication, or merely that his penchant for idolizing women, “putting them on a pedestal,” has simply taken a new form, cutting off the possibility of a more intimate connection.
Thus, the film’s title is both ironic and true. While the two men’s understanding of carnal matters, as far as any mutuality between the sexes, has developed little since their college days, knowledge of the body is perhaps all that they have, defeated as they have been in developing a bond that goes beyond the physical.