Reds
I just finished watching the new 25th Anniversary DVD Edition of "Reds," and not enough extraordinary things can be said about it. Warren Beatty's 1981 film is the story of the intersecting lives of American Communist John Reed (author of "Ten Days That Shook the World" and the only American buried inside the Kremlin), his writer/feminist wife Louise Bryant, and their social circle of Greenwich Village radicals during the revolutionary period from 1915 to 1920.The three hour and 15 minute film, equal parts drama and history lesson, is the greatest romance epic in American film history, the final half hour never failing to leave me awash in my own blubber. Beatty, Diane Keaton, Maureen Stapleton, and Jack Nicholson sparkle, and the movie is enlivened by the narrative of about two dozen elderly "Witnesses" to the lives of Reed and Bryant, including author Henry Miller and comedian George Jessel, who both passed just prior to the film's theatrical release. Their presence, and the depiction of such historical figures as Anarchist Emma Goldman, labor leader Bill Haywood, and playwright Eugene O'Neill had me sprinting to the internet in the aftermath of this latest viewing.
Beatty's remarkable achievement as writer, director, and lead actor in "Reds" might have even been surpassed by his success as the film's producer-- coaxing the Paramount/Gulf & Western company to put $35 million behind-- what Beatty calls in one of the DVD's documentary extras-- "a 195-minute movie about a Communist who dies" during the same period that the Reagan Revolution was beginning. "Reds" is often remembered as a Russian epic, a kind of flip-side "Dr. Zhivago," but it's really about Americans and our specific strand of social optimism, about the alternating heroism and often-tragic consequences of our idealism.
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Nearly a full generation after the collapse of the Communist bloc, and much longer past the beginning of radical disillusion caused by the installation of the Soviets' totalitarian regime, it's interesting to speculate about how one today might have dealt with the rising tide of history if magically transported back to that particular time and place. After all, American women were still denied voting rights when the Bolshevik Revolution commenced in 1917. American Socialists were the leading proponents on the nation's political stage for equal rights, the socio-economic safety net, safe working conditions, and a legislative end to unprosecuted lynchings across the South.
Reed would surely be fighting today for the workers of the Ford Motor Company. Just after an announcement that 40,000 jobs would be cut in the coming years, Ford announced last week a breathtaking $12.7 billion annual loss for 2006. Executives blamed the company's problems on the costs of health care for their assembly line employees, but they simultaneously announced that they're considering performance bonuses for their top executives. "More of the compensation of senior leadership is tied to their performance," said CEO Alan Mulally, deep into his corporate fantasyworld. "This team has made great progress. You have to keep the talented people you really need." An amazing perspective.
As a society, we also lack today, as we did in the teens, for a system that allows for crusading, truth-telling journalists like Reed. Notice that the article linked above appeared in that particular newspaper's "Business" section, a staple element of both print and electronic mainstream media in the new millennium. Yet, how many news outlets offer time and space for a workers' section. All they do is list the job openings. No wonder we wind up with so many skewed facts and fucked-up social priorities, while said media outlets continue to lose their battle against an eroding customer base.
posted by CM @ 4:22 PM
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