Summertree (1971): Cast, Plot & Where to Watch

In 1970, Jerry is a twenty-year-old on the cusp of adulthood who returns home to tell his parents that he’s thinking about leaving university to “find himself.” The conversation instantly prickles with worry: their expensive tuition already feels like a sunk cost, and the shadow of the Vietnam War looms large, threatening to strip away his student draft deferment if he walks away from school. The tension at home is palpable, yet the movie quietly uses this friction to map a young man’s search for identity against a backdrop of civic duty and familial expectations.