In his Academy Award acceptance speech, Warren Beatty plauded a capitalistic system that would permit the making of a movie like this -- about a rabble-rousing journalist who joined the Russian revolution and wound up buried in the Kremlin. He was right to do it. Imagine a Soviet movie about an heroic capitalist? John D. Rockefeller as iconoclastic humanist? (He was infected by altruism in old age.)
The story illustrates John Read's achievement of class consciousness. Karl Marx distinguished between what he called "false consciousness" and "class consciousness." In the former, you blame all your misfortunes on bad luck, personal flaws, a lousy upbringing, and so forth. In "class consciousness" you recognize that the problem is systemic, that you're humped because the class system is designed to keep you down at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. The path to improvement comes not through efforts to improve one's self but through collective power.
In the film, "The Grapes of Wrath", Tom Joad and Casey the Preacher achieve class consciousness. Ma Joad, with her speech about hunkering down and letting the rich destroy themselves, does not. Here, Warren Beatty as Jack Reed wavers back and forth between false consciousness and class consciousness. The choice is put to him bluntly by Jerzy Kozinski as a Red Russian leader -- what's more important, your love for your wife (Diane Keaton) or the fate of all the people of Russia?
Kozinski is one of many recognizable supporting players. I don't know why, but many of them have signed on for small roles in the way that European actors do. They don't mind taking tiny parts once in a while. They don't seem to be afraid that it will damage their standing on the A list. I won't list all of the established performers with small roles but they include people like Paul Sorvino and Gene Hackman. Good on them!
But only half of the movie is about the "liberation" of the Russian people. The other half, probably the major part, deals with the love affair between Louise Bryant (Keaton) and Beatty's character. In the early years of the 20th century there was a movement towards greater freedom. (Women didn't yet have the vote, for instance.) And there are many talky and somewhat dull arguments between Keaton and Beatty. She seems more committed to throwing off the shackles than he does.
The film is definitely not a propaganda piece along the lines of, say, "Mission to Moscow" or "North Star" -- the sort of thing that came out of Hollywood during the war years. And it's not an anti-communist tract either. It's unsparing in its depiction of the results of the revolution. The aftermath of the moderate Karensky government is thoroughly familiar to anyone who knows what happens AFTER a revolution. There's an internal split based on self-interest and a lot of shouting about ideological purity. A lot of blood is often spilled, which is shown in "Doctor Zhivago" but not here. Things fall apart. The center cannot hold -- because there IS no center, and eventually something resembling a dictatorship is established, if only to maintain order in the streets. Josef Stalin literally killed more Russians than the Nazis did.
I rather like "Reds" because it's a courageous movie in displaying so flagrantly the chaos that follows the deposing (and slaughter) of Czar Nicholas. The business about "liberation" is treated ironically most of the time, undercutting the seriousness of the theme.
I like it too because of Jack Nicholson's depiction of Eugene O'Neill as a depressed, alcoholic playwright, smothered in false consciousness, given to loving individuals rather than social classes.
At the same time, the movie sometimes drags. I think I understand why the love interest and the revolutionary motives are there, and why they're necessary, but I could have done with less of the former and a little more formal explication of the latter. There is so much shouting at so many crowded, smoky meetings that it's easy to get lost.
There are a multitude of inserts of older people talking about Reed and Bryant and the revolution and Greenwich Village after the turn of the century. Most of them weren't alive at the time, but Henry Miller is charming in his candor and cynicism.
The story illustrates John Read's achievement of class consciousness. Karl Marx distinguished between what he called "false consciousness" and "class consciousness." In the former, you blame all your misfortunes on bad luck, personal flaws, a lousy upbringing, and so forth. In "class consciousness" you recognize that the problem is systemic, that you're humped because the class system is designed to keep you down at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. The path to improvement comes not through efforts to improve one's self but through collective power.
In the film, "The Grapes of Wrath", Tom Joad and Casey the Preacher achieve class consciousness. Ma Joad, with her speech about hunkering down and letting the rich destroy themselves, does not. Here, Warren Beatty as Jack Reed wavers back and forth between false consciousness and class consciousness. The choice is put to him bluntly by Jerzy Kozinski as a Red Russian leader -- what's more important, your love for your wife (Diane Keaton) or the fate of all the people of Russia?
Kozinski is one of many recognizable supporting players. I don't know why, but many of them have signed on for small roles in the way that European actors do. They don't mind taking tiny parts once in a while. They don't seem to be afraid that it will damage their standing on the A list. I won't list all of the established performers with small roles but they include people like Paul Sorvino and Gene Hackman. Good on them!
But only half of the movie is about the "liberation" of the Russian people. The other half, probably the major part, deals with the love affair between Louise Bryant (Keaton) and Beatty's character. In the early years of the 20th century there was a movement towards greater freedom. (Women didn't yet have the vote, for instance.) And there are many talky and somewhat dull arguments between Keaton and Beatty. She seems more committed to throwing off the shackles than he does.
The film is definitely not a propaganda piece along the lines of, say, "Mission to Moscow" or "North Star" -- the sort of thing that came out of Hollywood during the war years. And it's not an anti-communist tract either. It's unsparing in its depiction of the results of the revolution. The aftermath of the moderate Karensky government is thoroughly familiar to anyone who knows what happens AFTER a revolution. There's an internal split based on self-interest and a lot of shouting about ideological purity. A lot of blood is often spilled, which is shown in "Doctor Zhivago" but not here. Things fall apart. The center cannot hold -- because there IS no center, and eventually something resembling a dictatorship is established, if only to maintain order in the streets. Josef Stalin literally killed more Russians than the Nazis did.
I rather like "Reds" because it's a courageous movie in displaying so flagrantly the chaos that follows the deposing (and slaughter) of Czar Nicholas. The business about "liberation" is treated ironically most of the time, undercutting the seriousness of the theme.
I like it too because of Jack Nicholson's depiction of Eugene O'Neill as a depressed, alcoholic playwright, smothered in false consciousness, given to loving individuals rather than social classes.
At the same time, the movie sometimes drags. I think I understand why the love interest and the revolutionary motives are there, and why they're necessary, but I could have done with less of the former and a little more formal explication of the latter. There is so much shouting at so many crowded, smoky meetings that it's easy to get lost.
There are a multitude of inserts of older people talking about Reed and Bryant and the revolution and Greenwich Village after the turn of the century. Most of them weren't alive at the time, but Henry Miller is charming in his candor and cynicism.