User reviews

The story of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 on the trumped-up charge of spying for the Soviet Union, "Daniel" is fictionalized but still relevant. Mandy Patinkin and Lindsay Crouse play the Julius and Ethel characters Paul and Rochelle Isaacson, while Timothy Hutton is their son Daniel, trying all his life to try and find out what happened to them, and what was behind it.

I actually know Robert Meeropol (Julius and Ethel's real son). After he and his brother found out the truth behind their parents' execution (that the McCarthyites wanted to eliminate any opposition), they sued the government and won. They established the Rosenberg Fund for Children, to protect the families of political prisoners. On the 50th anniversary of his parents' execution, Robert Meeropol reminded the world that the "War on Terrorism" has replaced the Cold War.

As long as totalitarian governments exist, "Daniel" will remain a relevant movie. Or even under democracy, to remind people of despotism.

Daniel is one of Sidney Lumet's favourites of his own films. He cites it even before Dog Day Afternoon, Network and 12 Angry Men. I guess when a film isn't as assimilated into pop culture as they are you can keep it closer to your heart. It's a shame, the film deserves so much more attention. This is no half hearted venture. It's emotionally charged and meticulous in all its details. From the textured cinematography (great use of colour changes for past and present), slick editing and rousing performances, you can feel the heat of the passion poured into it. And it hits some real movie magic moments, especially with Mandy Patinkin. Perhaps the problem is that it lacks a real hook to real you in. Its purpose is clear, the activism is justified, but it feels quite specific to its two time periods and struggles to resonate the same way now. It's a film that really needed to strike its chord when it was released. But that doesn't hold it back from being a deeply poignant experience, the highlight being Timothy Hutton's powerful performance as the titular protagonist.

8/10

In 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were tried and convicted of conspiring to deliver atomic secrets to Russia during the 40s (when the U.S. and Russia were wartime allies). The trial took place in an atmosphere of anti-Communist hysteria.

Prior to their arrest, the following events took place: State Department official Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury, Senator Joseph McCarthy launched a campaign to rid the State Department of "subversives", British physicist Klaus Fuchs was convicted of spying for the Russians, Russia exploded an atomic bomb, and the Korean War broke out.

The chief prosecution witnesses were chemist Harry Gold who admitted he had never seen or known either Rosenberg, and Ethel's brother David Greenglass, a machinist working on the Manhattan project in Los Alamos, who provided the jury with details of the Rosenberg's involvement in espionage. Ethel's guilt was based solely on Greenglass' testimony that she had typed up classified secrets (this account was later acknowledged by Greenglass to be false).

In 1953, Julius and Ethel were executed after numerous appeals for clemency had been rejected. The executions caused deep divisions among the American people and the Rosenbergs were the last Americans to be executed for sabotage. Fifty years later, we are still trying to come to terms with the case.

Daniel, a 1983 film based on the novel "The Book of Daniel" by E.L. Doctorow, is a fictional account of the trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (called Paul and Rochelle Isaacson in the movie) focusing on how these events affected their children. Turning in a strong performance, Timothy Hutton plays their son Daniel, who is searching for the truth about his parent's guilt or innocence. Amanda Plummer is his sister Susan (in reality, the Rosenbergs had two sons Robert and Michael) who suffers a mental breakdown as a result of the execution, and Ed Asner portrays the Isaacson's lawyer who did his best for the parents, who are shown as self-righteous and uncooperative.

The movie unfolds in numerous flashbacks delineated by color filters (blue for current, orange for past). Lumet shows the Isaacsons (Mandy Patinkin and Lindsay Crouse) participation in protest movements and Communist Party activities and depicts their arrest, confinement, trial, and execution. The film does not make any statement as to their guilt or innocence. However, in an emotional scene with their accuser's sister, Daniel speculates that Rochelle's brother Selig Mindish (Joseph Leon) fingered the Isaacsons to protect other Party members.

Most of the film centers on the parent's relationship with the children. While showing how much the parents loved them, it also makes clear that their dedication to political causes transcended everything else in their lives (they could have been freed if they named names but their politics dictated that they would not cooperate with the FBI).

Daniel successfully captures the hysteria of the period and the suffering of the children who were shunted between overburdened relatives, children's shelters, and foster parents. In one of the most moving scenes in the film, Daniel and Susan run away from the shelter to walk the streets of New York looking for their old home, while in the background Paul Robeson sings, "This Little Light of Mine".

Though Daniel is a powerful and moving drama, the film is flawed by Patinkin's over-the-top performance, fake Jewish accents, and confusing jumps between different time periods. I also thought Susan's character was created solely to manipulate the emotions. Is Daniel is a great film? No, I don't think it is, but I do love it for its passion and for the courage it shows in bringing to life a difficult and troubling episode in American history.

After his worried sister suffers a nervous breakdown, a graduate student tries to investigate whether his parents were really guilty of being Soviet spies in this solemn drama from Sidney Lumet. The film is loosely based on an actual married couple who were executed in the 1950s with their young children forced to grow up without them. The film shares some striking similarities with Lumet's latter 'Running on Empty' as it spins a tale of two youths trying to live their own lives separate from their parents' political actions. Not nearly as well-known or acclaimed, 'Daniel' is beset by an unhelpful, overly complex narrative structure that jumps randomly between time periods. Some of the supporting performances are also overwrought. The film does well though depicting Daniel and his sister's difficulties as children removed from their parents. The harsh times they experience in a state run institution are especially potent and the bond between the pair is heartfelt. Timothy Hutton is also perfectly cast in a passionate performance as the adult title character and his on/off narration of how the electric chair works is effectively eerie. Speaking of which, the eventual execution scenes are handled very well. On one hand, 'Daniel' is a bit of a mess with its time period leaps and inconsistent performances, but its portrait of a young man haunted by his parents' fate truly resonates.

Daniel (Timothy Hutton) is the son of two radical parents. I don't mean radical like it was used in the 80's, but radical as it was used in the 60's and earlier. They were heavily active in the Communist Party as it was represented in America. Their involvement and even their lives came to an end when they were accused of selling atomic secrets to the Russians.

You can imagine the effects on a child when his/her parents are executed. And in this case Daniel had a sister, so two children were negatively affected. The movie bounces back and forth between the late 30's/early 40's and the 60's which was pre and post Daniel's parents' death. Susan (Amanda Plummer), Daniel's sister, has taken her parents' death a lot harder than Daniel. She's convinced that the government executed them unjustly whereas Daniel needs more proof.

"Daniel" is politically charged with the politics of 1940's America. The acting performances were good even if the script was a bit lacking. I like Sidney Lumet as a director which is why I even watched. It's a dense topic, but nothing Lumet can't handle. I think the movie's biggest failure was to move me. There was a little bit of mystery and a lot of drama, but none of that truly drew me in.

I knew about DANIEL for years because it's one of Sidney Lumet's less remembered movies and since I am like the major expert on lesser movies (judging from most of the titles I rated and/or reviewed here in 8 years), one day I would have finally seen it. That day arrived last June, and I found it merely ok.

When it begins we hear Daniel Isaacson's (Timothy Hutton) voice explaining how the electric chair works and after these first minutes we are introduced to the Isaacson family when Daniel's sister Susan (Amanda Plummer) becomes obsessed with revolution and Daniel thinks that his family is kinda marked. This because his parents Paul (Mandy Patinkin) and Rochelle are accused of being Soviet spies, so Daniel will investigate until their parents' unevitable execution.

I liked and disliked DANIEL. From one hand Sidney Lumet's style is evident, and the acting by Hutton in the title role and Plummer as his sister was great. But on the other hand it's a bit too long considering the subject matter and I think that if they would have cut 25 minutes it would have been better. Also, scenes of the present are intervowen with scenes and Daniel and Susan when they grew in an institution because they weren't allowed to stay in the same household with their parents, and the cuts were simply a distraction. Yet, but this counts as another plus, the execution scenes were very realistic like when they happened in real life (and still happen in a few States).

Overall, a mixed bag from one of America's most acclaimed directors but if you can separate its shortcomings from its strong points, you still have a decent story with some great acting, and for this reason alone I would recommend it since it's also available on YouTube.

DANIEL

"Some day I shall understand"

Some words abouts the complex story. Paul and Rochelle Isaacson (Mandy Patinkin, Lindsay Crouse) were executed in the early 1950s for alleged espionage. Their children Daniel and Susan can't get over this. In the late 1960s, after an attempted suicide of his politically active sister Susan (Amanda Plummer), the rather unpolitical Daniel (Timothy Hutton) tries to find out what exactly happened in the past, tries to understand his parents' lives, tries to help his sister and to get along with his own life...

Sidney Lumet's film "Daniel" (1983) and E.L. Doctorow's novel "The Book of Daniel", which it is based upon, are inspired by the controversial Rosenberg case.

The film shows how children can be affected by the lives of their parents. And it is about the search of one's place in life. Lumet treated these themes again later in his fascinating "Running on Empty" (1988), starring River Phoenix, Christine Lahti and Judd Hirsch. Another theme of "Daniel" is the wish of human beings to understand their parents. Lumet described the movie in a Village Voice interview in the following way: "To me, "Daniel" is the story of a boy who buries himself with his parents, and spends the rest of his life trying to climb out of the grave." The film uses a complex flashback structure to tell its story. "Daniel" illuminates from Daniel Isaacson's view the history of the American left from the 1930s to the late 1960s, including the different left movements. In its criticism of death penalty and McCarthyism, "Daniel" is also a political statement.

Sidney Lumet is one of the great directors of the American cinema. Lumet himself is politically left-leaning, and "Daniel" is probably one of his most personal works. It was about seven years before he got the chance to realize this project. Many people worked on the film for the minimum salary set by the union. Timothy Hutton turned down a million-dollar offer on a film and played Daniel instead for about 25000 dollars.

And Lumet is right when he writes in his informative book "Making Movies": "Despite its critical and financial failure, I think it's one of the best pictures I've ever done." The film proves again Lumet's ability to tell complex, emotionally absorbing, unsentimental stories. Everything works in this uncompromising picture. A few of Lumet's films were marred by their scripts ("The Appointment", "Power", "Family Business", "A Stranger Among Us"). But Doctorow's screenplay for "Daniel" is excellent and extraordinarily multi-layered. Lumet's direction is sensitive and fascinating. Timothy Hutton (who later starred with Nick Nolte and Armand Assante in "Q & A"), Edward Asner (who plays the Isaacson's attorney), Lindsay Crouse (who also appeared in "Prince of the City" and "The Verdict"), Mandy Patinkin, Amanda Plummer and Ilan M. Mitchell-Smith (in the role of the young Daniel in the early 1950s) stand out in a fine cast. The impressive cinematography, which supports the flashback structure by a careful use of color filters, is by Andrzej Bartkowiak, who has worked on 11 Lumet pictures up to now. The rich soundtrack, mainly consisting of songs interpreted by Paul Robeson, perfectly fits and illustrates the film's themes. The editing is excellent as well (a good example is the brilliantly filmed end sequence).

There are many great moments in this film. For instance, there is a powerful rally scene in which you can feel that the Isaacson's children are afraid of the world around them. Another moving scene is a sequence in which young Daniel and young Susan (played by Ilan M. Mitchell-Smith and Jena Greco) walk through New York in search of their home. This scene, also showing Lumet's typically great use of the city of New York, reminded me of Michelangelo Antonioni.

I'm an admirer of Sidney Lumet's cinema. "Daniel" is one of his most underestimated motion pictures, really a must-see. Of course, don't expect standard Hollywood entertainment, but a serious work.

"Daniel" should have been an intricate, devastating account of ruined lives, another "Long Day's Journey into Night". With director Sidney Lumet at the helm and great actors on-board, audiences in 1983 were probably expecting a masterpiece. The first problem with this film about the traumatized American son and daughter of internationally-scandalized parents--convicted and put to death for spying for the Soviets in the 1950s--belongs in its own scenario; screenwriter E. L. Doctorow, adapting his novel "The Book of Daniel", and Lumet made a big fuss over the lineage of their piece, claiming it was in no way a portrait of real-life executed spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who left behind two sons. Of course it is, which makes all the dropped hints and 'fictionalized' details that much more annoying. A second problem--and a much larger one--lies in Doctorow's writing, which shuts the audience out early on. "Daniel" isn't a witty or chatty examination of past-and-present events; it's a dirge-like tale that holds any sort of clever banter in contempt. Lumet loves shouting actors on the screen, and here he keeps everyone hollering until there's nothing left to listen to (and nothing to look at except pained expressions). Timothy Hutton is miscast as Daniel; Mandy Patinkin, Lindsay Crouse, Ellen Barkin and Amanda Plummer are all wasted on unplayable material. * from ****

Daniel, dear fellow movie lovers, is my favorite movie of all time.

I can barely list all the reasons why I love this movie. I have recommended it to many people, and frankly no one has basically reacted to it as enthusiastically as i have.

But guess what, I don't care. This movie resonates with me. Thanks to E.L. Doctorow, Lumet provides us -- specifically -- with a devastating examination of the nature of political martyrdom and its effect on the martyr's family. We look at the critical intersection between family and ideology.

Beyond the scorching power of the plot and the highly ambitious story line, the Daniel cast is superb and they play their roles to tremendous effect, with a couple of minor exceptions. I don't remember how Paul Isaacson was portrayed in Doctorow's novel, but the casting of the powerful and macho Mandy Patinkin as the Pauly character directly modeled on Julius Rosenberg (who at least from his photos appeared to be nebish-y and not projecting any degree of the virility Patinkin offers) was perfect. What a wonderful liberty Lumet took.

First-rate acting also comes from the tortured siblings Timothy Hutton and Amanda Plummer, plus Ed Asner, Lindsay Crouse, Tovah Feldshuh, Ellen Barkin and numerous supporting players.

The target audience for Daniel, perhaps, is the person who (like me) at some time(s) in their life has allowed political action to become more important than ostensible self-interest or family interest. Unless you have personally had this experience, I am guessing you will relate less to this movie.

But please don't let that stop you! This is a martyr movie I am sure many non-martyrs can enjoy.

I can rattle off no less than a half dozen scenes that I consider timeless and priceless. Don't get me started.

OK, I relent. I will say that the Peekskill riot scene is memorable and special. Every time I am on a bus, and it makes a turn or goes through the woods or whatever or whatever, I think of this scene. The scene's intense crucifixion/climax is excruciating to watch.

And the kids' return to the shuttered Bronx apartment -- and attorney Ed Asner explaining to the befuddled aunt that, 'Lady, these people are in trouble!' -- and the Union Square rally -- and the Sing Sing scene -- and omigod the Paul Robeson score -- and and and and...

When Lumet got his special Oscar a yr or so ago i thought, oh good, finally, the world will hear about Daniel, my #1 movie. But I was deflated when it got mentioned maybe not at all or at best in passing. Some newspaper movie critics covering the award, alluded to the 'underrated' Daniel. Sigh ****.

Well, dear friends, lemme just say that 'underrated' is a gross exaggeration. In my mind, I cannot overrate this movie.

Thus -- I exhort all IMDb people to watch this movie, get past the early Patinkin Russian folk dance scene in the apartment, and stay with it! I hope you will begin to appreciate Daniel just half as much as I do.

And thank you, Sidney Lumet.

Excellent, fictionalized account of the Rosenberg story. Looked at from all perspectives from the early 1950's to the late 60's. We come away not caring if they did it or not! Lindsay Crouse stands out in her role as Rochelle. Mandy Patinkin is excellent. as always. They seem to steal the show from Hutton. The Paul Robeson (Monitor label) recordings also add to the picture's stunning realism. This is certainly one of the better movies of the early 1980's. The E.L. Doctorow screenplay is better than the novel, "The Book of Daniel" which I thought was rather strange. If I hadn't seen the movie first, I would have been lost just reading the book.

E.L.Doctorow the American author most known for his book "Ragtime" also wrote a book called "Daniel" an fictional account of Julius and Ethel Rosenebrg, the couple that was executed in the 1950's for suspicion of being Comunists spies. In "Daniel" (now the movie) Doctorow wrote the screenplay based on his own book and made a great work very similar to his work and added a very peculiar cinematographic language.

Sidney Lumet directs the story of Daniel (played by Timothy Hutton) a depressed and conflicted young man that pays for the supposed sins of his father and mother Paul and Rochelle Isaacson (played by Mandy Patinkin and Lindsay Crouse respectively), a Jewish couple executed in the electric chair for being considered enemies of the state. Daniel's story is told in flashbacks and in chapters where Daniel appears in front of the camera narrating several forms of executions and what happens to people during the act. This a reminder of what we're gonna see happening with his parents.

Daniel's story is presented in the future where he tries to clean his parents name, searching the people who met them, the lawyer (Edward Asner) that helped the Isaacson family during the trials and Daniel's sister (Amanda Plummer) a woman that suffered even more than his brother with the family's division and their parents death, and now she's living in a medical clinic. Daniel's story also covers his childhood (here he's played by Ilan Mitchell-Smith). He didn't understand what his parents were doing by attending a social meeting with many protestants that were against bombs construction in the 1940's and 1950's.

This is a powerful story about family's past and future, the decisions that parents made by not telling simple facts to their sons and what eventually this may cause. You see that Daniel as a kid wants to know everything that happens to his father but he keeps the boy away. In the prison, when the family have their last meeting it's really hard not say the truth about what's gonna happen to the parents and their sad end. There's no other way for Paul and Rochelle. It's also a story about a man who can't let go of his past, thinking that everything that happened with their parents ruined everyone's life and his vision of world, since now he's a protestant against the war on Vietnam. It really follows very close the book, without any main differences.

It's difficult to understand why this movie is not talked and discussed very much, or why it wasn't one of the Sidney Lumet's work to be considered one of his great works. It has great performances by the cast (Hutton and Asner has the most notable performances), a good screenplay with a very relevant story based on true events. Absolutely great. 10/10

Critics who fault Lumet for highlighting the characters' impressions and mindset more than their believed historical or political accuracy were ignorant of the fact that, even in our loudly, reductively politicized times, storytelling is not the same as politics or history. Lumet doesn't overlook social texture in this humanistic triumph, but he's first an artistic craftsman, fashioning his own vision of the world's dealings. Lumet does entail, in Daniel's meeting with the NY Times reporter, the potential guilt of the youth's parents. As he does throughout his work though, he looks for connotations in actions, not just social particulars. The film doesn't hinge on Rosenbergian associations and recollections but like all stories relies on our understanding of these characters' predicaments, signaling the complete human catch-22.

It's about the price of zeal. Who pays it? Daniel longs more to comprehend than to validate the past. Lumet shows him fighting to know himself, his spite and fixations, and struggling through a grasp of his family's devastations. He becomes a sort of detective of his own life as he probes his family's saga and re-experiences his reactions to the uncommon burdens put on him by his parents' trial and execution. Through Daniel's hunt for self-discovery in his own recollections, in addition to his links with people who were concerned in his parents' case, we see from within thirty years in the life of American discord, from the Depression and WWII to the McCarthy era and the 1960s' anti-war movement. The effects of parents on children, of dogma on life, of the past on individuals, are contemplated in the saga of two generations of a family whose obsession is not success, money or love, but social integrity.

Lumet is conveying his wish to exceed the boundaries compelled by the brand of realism in Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Prince of the City, etc. Notwithstanding his concern with social matters, he never made message movies. What he favors are essentially character studies. Generally the most dramatic altercations occur between characters in the framework of the society they occupy. So his predilection guides him to political suggestions.

This is a profound, solidly felt film that enhances the central characters who partake in Daniel's revelation of himself and his bond with past and present. In a deeper and fuller way the film reconstructs the imagery and themes of the Rosenbergs' world, the hazards of an existence on the brink of romanticism, the fabled load of deeds much smaller than their penalties. Certainly the Isaacson most undone by such things is Daniel's younger sister, Susan. Lumet opens the film with Susan's badgering of Daniel and her foster parents on the good radical political usage of her parents' trust fund, following succinct fourth wall breakage of Daniel's callous explanation of the electrocution procedure and Lumet's ensuing cut to 1960s political protests. Susan has already started to use political involvement as she previously used religion, drugs and sex, as a surrogate for comprehending her distressing need to obliterate her consciousness.

Following scenes that revert to their childhood, Daniel finds Susan's present of an old "Free Them" poster and an opened sachet of razor blades in declaration of her attempted suicide. Lumet then instantly cuts to after their parents' arrest, when Ascher, the attorney, takes the children to a rally for the Isaacsons. Abruptly cries emerge, "Here are the children," and hands appear to pass the petrified children to the platform. Little Susan shouts for her brother as they're stage-managed as political poker chips over ceremonial cries, "Free them," an omen of Susan's adult dependence. From below, Lumet draws near on the stricken faces defenseless in the squeeze of passion. Defenseless. Daniel's visit to the committed Susan happens after allusions to Rochelle's demented mother, cyclically driven mad by the struggle of her immigrant life.

This layout offers political and emotional background for Susan's psychosomatic degeneration, still trying to use her mocking humor to offset hopelessness. It's this that launches Daniel's course of turning from hostility against the world and his stand-in family, his young wife and infant son. Nowhere in the film are Paul Robeson's spirituals more poignant than throughout the siblings' trip homeward from a cruel charity shelter. Cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak's burgundy browns overshadow as, to Robeson's solemn song, Lumet draws the defenseless route through the cold backdrop. The children hold one another on traffic islands, Susan coiling into her big brother.

The triumph of Lumet's handling of Paul and Rochelle Isaacson was in illustrating American communism as another political approach which was not just customary in its environment, but in many ways important and constructive. In a first-rate scene, Paul coaches the admiring Daniel on the iniquities of DiMaggio's manipulation of his image and his audience through his picture on a cereal box. Ultimately, the film ends by ironically observing the romantic modern goodness of the late 1960s that asserted that the revolution had unfolded and that thus things inevitably were better than when the Isaacsons met a gruesome outcome at the behest of a thoughtless judicial system. Daniel closes the film possibly reflecting on that exact question, not predictably undertaking a basic extremism, a comfortable Marxist unity with his general past. Lumet's political and moral vision is seldom so basic.

In filming E.L. Doctorow's fictionalized account of the Rosenberg case and its implications for the children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Sidney Lumet brought a good vision to the finished product. Lumet grew up in those times and had I'm sure peripheral associations with the kind of people that would have gone the same way as Julius and Ethel or in the case of the film and novel, Paul and Rochelle Isaacson. Lumet's love of New York also helps a lot in this film.

The fictionalized Rosenbergs are played by Mandy Patinkin and Lindsay Crouse. We get the idealism of the Rosenbergs, the history of persecution they felt, the empathy for other minorities. It should never be forgotten that it was Communists for their own reasons, but still were the first ones to take up black civil rights as a group cause. Radical politics and all, Patinkin and Crouse give their children a fine set of universal values to live by.

The real Rosenberg sons were adopted by another couple and to this day still try and claim a good legacy for their parents. In the film the title role of Daniel is played by Timothy Hutton and his sister is played by Ellen Barkin. Years after the executions of their parents they have continued the radical traditions of the parents, but they're into the protest politics of the sixties, involved in a mass movement the parents only dreamed about, but hardly under the auspices of the Communist Party USA.

Barkin is caught up in the moment, but Hutton wants to clear his parent's names. In real life it was Ethel Rosenberg's brother David Greenglass who fingered both of them as Communist spies. Greenglass was assigned as a sergeant to Los Alamos and purportedly did the actual stealing of the atomic bomb design. In other words for the kids it was a beloved uncle.

They should have kept that part of the story, but I'm willing to bet that E.L. Doctorow did not want to be sued by David Greenglass who is still alive now, so a family friend and hanger-on with the Communists played by Joseph Leon is the informer.

The highlight of the film is the confrontation scene with Hutton and Tovah Feldshuh playing the daughter of Joseph Leon. The growing up experiences of both are laid out naked and bare, the acting is some of the best both these players have ever done.

In real life Julius Rosenberg was guilty of being a ringleader of a nest of Communist spies. Ethel Rosenberg's guilt is far more problematic, the closest you could come to here is Mrs. Mary Surratt who ran the boardinghouse where Booth and his fellow conspirators met in the Lincoln assassination plot. Her son was part of the ring, but he fled the country so the country in the ill tempered mood it was in, countenanced the hanging of the mother instead. Ethel was probably supportive of her husband's activities as a dutiful wife and nothing more.

What is also clear is that the US government threw out the rulebook when it came to due process in the prosecution of the case. It was the times, you had to have been there.

Although it's not the real story, no more than Billy Bathgate was about Dutch Schultz, E.L. Doctorow and Sidney Lumet weave a very fine tale about some troubled times.

This movie,impressively directed and played by both the main and supporting actors,poses to us a question:do parents have the right to sacrifice the future of their children on the altar of their ideology? That their ideology and practice,Communism and its world wide tentacles,was seriously flawed and misguided,is more clear today than it was at the time the movie was made, before the collapse of the Soviet Union and its underpinning ideology. The plot centers over the attempts of convicted spies(for the Soviet Union)son to uncover a truth he believes exists,only to find a different reality,very perplexing. The message one may take from the plot is that evaluating one's parent from the perspective of an adult is both difficult and painful,truly entering a lions den.

I recently watched this movie again after many years. I did not see it when it came out in 1983. That was a hectic and sad time at the beginning of the Reagan presidency, and I was busy fighting against the rising tide of that eras neo-Fascism. I wish I had seen it then. I think it would have piqued my interest in the subject and given me more tools to fight with. It has taken years for me to really appreciate what that dark period in time must have been like. I have done a lot of research on the Red Scare and the Communist Party in the US since then. And here we are again on the cusp of the ugly and dark side of American culture in a Trumpian future. So many parallels.

Sidney Lumet was a consummate director who tackled issues that were prescient and thoughtful. He excelled at helping his actors with character development and in creating a cinematic verisimilitude that puts you right in the period and place.

Timothy Hutton, an entirely under-appreciated actor, was perfect as Daniel. Ed Asner is always a joy to watch. The entire ensemble of actors made this a classic that should be studied by audiences and students in order to gain a critical understanding of the underbelly of American History, past present and future.

Bravo!

If you want to know what the American society is about, this film is a good place to start gaining such knowledge. To protect their property, those few rich who own America, Jew and Non-Jew, will stop at nothing. As always, it is easier to understand a few people's sufferings compared with millions sufferings. But that is not really the lesson here. The lesson is that America has never been a democracy. At best it is an oligarchy inhabited by people, who believe that something is fair because it is a competition in which everyone can participate, admittedly not on the same terms but still. But a competition in which the many are left comparatively poor and the few are the winners is not something fair - it's an abomination! And a democracy (the only one existing now is the one in Switzerland with all its flaws) is government by the people, the people deciding in matters and the government only having the right to carry out what the people have decided, which, for some odd reason, today is called "direct" democracy. America is and has always been a representative dictatorship, in which the people have the right to choose one of their dictators (those with the real power always hiding in the background, the owners who buy everyone) called "the president" and otherwise have very little right. How little "right" the American people has in the American society is made very obvious in this picture.

I watched this film at a university TV channel. I never heard before about this film. It was wonderful to find a masterpiece in 130 minutes. Absolutely masterpiece. Must see.