| REDS |
 1981 - USADirector: Warren Beatty
- Reviewed by Linda
Frankly, I'm surprised that this film ever got made. Beatty was a vocally liberal actor who wanted to write, direct, and star in a film about the birth of leftist political parties in the United States. He wanted to tell the story of an American who was a proud communist, who is buried in the walls of the Kremlin, fer crying out loud. Remember, Reds was under production when the United States boycotted the Moscow Summer Olympics because we, well, HATED the Soviet Union. But still, a major studio (hesitantly) bankrolled the risky project, and Beatty's epic dream was realized. And this film IS epic. Beginning in 1917, the American intellectuals and artists (aka the people who seem to have plenty of leisure time to talk politics) are transfixed by news reports of the Bolshevik Revolution happening in progressive Russia. Beatty stars as John Reed, a writer and radical who believes that socialism (and later communism) will save the world. Charismatic and more than a little cocky, he meets his match on a trip home to Portland, Oregon to see his folks. There he encounters the spitfire Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton), a journalist and feminist. The air crackles around them, and before not so long she agrees to leave her boring dentist husband and follow Jack to New York City's Greenwich Village. Little does Louise know that this is the beginning of a tumultous affair not only with Jack, but with his crowd of intellectual and artistic friends who are always around. She doesn't seem to fit in with the likes of anarchist Emma Goldman (the fantastic—and Oscar-winning—Maureen Stapleton), who views Louise as an uninteresting hanger-on; or leftist writer Max Eastman (Edward Herrmann); or playwright and poet Eugene O'Neill (Jack Nicholson). While Jack goes around the country and around the world to passionately report on the growing socialist and communist movements, Louise finds herself left behind, and soon falls into a casual affair with O'Neill. Jack Nicholson, it is safe to say, steals the film (and the girl) right from under Beatty's nose, with his smouldering and lovelorn Gene. Before you can say, "Getting married will solve all of our problems of fighting and having affairs!" the Reeds take their stormy relationship to Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), Russia, where all of the action is. As his souvenier of the experience, Jack Reed brings home the information that becomes the sensational book Ten Days that Shook the World. But as his star in the American (and Russian) communist movement rises, Jack Reed is the last one to see that the new Bolshevik government isn't all that it promised to be. At over three hours long, Reds actually includes an intermission (the first half ending with a silhouette... maybe an homage to Gone With the Wind?). The story is fleshed out intriguingly with "witnesses" speaking to the camera—real people, all elderly when Beatty interviewed them—who talk about the Reeds from personal experience (and they are not all flattering stories). That touch almost makes the film almost seem like a docu-drama. It was an interesting and risky decision, but it really works to the benefit of the story. The locations from all over the world are glorious and cinematic, and the crowd scenes, filled with real, non-CGI people, are thrilling. The extras on this 2-disc set are all mini-docs about the production, with current interviews with Beatty, Nicholson, and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, among many others. Beatty is surprisingly chatty and eager to talk—surprising because I've seem him sit excruciatingly tight-lipped through a Barbara Walters interview before. With 25 years of perspective, people's thoughts on the making of the film are very interesting, and they all acknowledge that it would have been almost impossible to get studio backing for such an undertaking these days. The only one MIA is Diane Keaton. Beatty even kind of mocks her, saying she would roll her eyes at the talking head interviews for the DVD, but I wonder if there was some underlying juicy scoop that made her not want to participate. Her absence parallels one of the frustrating things about the movie itself: Depsite being the lead female character, the film doesn't tell us what happened to Louise Bryant in real life (it is worth a Google). The film leaves us hanging, just like Keaton's non-participation in this 25th anniversary release. |
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When I was a teenager and heard of Warren Beatty for the first time, it was unfortunately (for him) related to his starring role in the debacle Ishtar. Having no other reference, I didn't really understand how much he had fallen in the eyes of Hollywood. I didn't know that just half a dozen years earlier, his film opus Reds had received 12 Academy Award nominations, and walked away with three (including Best Director for Beatty). When Reds came out, I was in elementary school, and seeing a movie about communists was probably not high on my list. So with this 25th Anniversary Edition DVD release, I was watching the film for the first time.
