Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Pantheon movie of the month - REDS

What makes a pantheon movie? Quite simply, that I find nothing in any of the parts of the film that I would alter. Perfection of directorial vision, performances and technical mastery of the medium. Finally, that the combination of all these factors should render a whole that is innovative, ambitious and affecting.

REDS fits the bill. It is Warren Beatty's masterpiece. He began the project in the early 1970s, when his struggle to reconcile his immense fame as an actor with his left-wing politics led to him to the example of the Greenwich Village radicals of the 1910s and 20s. In particular, he focused on the figures of John "Jack" Reed and Louise Bryant. Beatty began interviewing famous artists, journalists and political activists who had known the pair, and formented the idea of an epic political and romantic movie starring himself as Reed and his then lover, Julie Christie, as Bryant. It is testament to Beatty's star power than he managed to shake down the ultra-capitalistic studio system for $35m to finance his epic.

Beatty was truly the father of the project - raising the money, co-writing, directing and starring in it. He shot the film over a year and released it in 1981. It was a difficult shoot. Beatty was uncompromising about his vision for the film, shooting multiple takes that exhausted his actors and crew and coming into conflict with the pantheon cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro (LAST TANGO IN PARIS, APOCALYPSE NOW.) For the record, the static framing at the start of the film is Beatty's vision. The dynamic camera movements in the latter half are all Storaro - not least the iconic scene where Beatty rides alongside the train.

The resulting film vindicated Beatty's faith in the project. REDS received Oscar nominations in all the major categories, and remains the only film to be nominated for all four acting gongs. In the end, Beatty won Best Director, Storaro won for Best Cinematography and Maureen Stapleton, who plays the ballsy political activist, Emma Goldman, won Best Supporting Actress. Otherwise the film lost out to ON GOLDEN POND (unfairly) and to CHARIOTS OF FIRE (another fine film). Most absurdly, Jack Nicholson, who plays Bryant's lover and playwright Eugene O'Neill, lost out to Sir John Gielgud for ARTHUR.

Since then, the movie has rather slipped out of the general public's consciousness in contrast to other epics like DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. Perhaps this is because viewers are put off by what they perceive will be Beatty's polemical left-wing stance. Or perhaps they are put off by the length per se - the movie is best shown in two parts of an hour and a half each. Part of the reason may also be that Beatty did not allow the movie to be cut down in length for TV. At any rate, the film is available on DVD now, and holds up perfectly well.

So who are these people that they should provoke such an epic movie? Jack Reed was a privileged Harvard man who scorned the establishment for a life as a radical journalist. He was a man of great personal charisma, with a talent for putting himself where the action was and reporting back to the American literati. Reed is famous, if at all, for documenting the Bolshevik Revolution in a piece of outstanding journalism, Ten Days That Shook The World. Upon his return from Russia, however, he got enmeshed in factional struggles within the emerging American Left. He returned to Russia to bid for his particular party to be sanctioned by the Comintern and, by way of a Finnish prison, eventually died in Russia. He was buried in the Kremlin walls - the only American to have achieved this (dubious?) honour.

Warren Beatty plays Reed as a sincere, earnest, charismatic playboy turned radical. The charm comes from the fact that Beatty plays Reed as well aware of the difficulty and often the ridiculousness of his position as a Rich Communist and American in Revolutionary Russia. Beatty's Reed has an energy and excitement about him that is contagious, whatever your political views. Indeed, as someone who professes political beliefs on the right, I was pleasantly surprised by just how restrained Beatty was. There is very little polemic in REDS. Rather, we are presented with a more complicated character study, of which politics is only one part.

If REDS is a character study rather than a political tract, it is a study not just of Jack Reed but also of Louise Bryant. Reed's character is rather fixed throughout the film. We meet him as a fully formed radical, confident of his place in the liberal intelligentsia and on the world stage. By contrast, Louise Bryant is a work in progress. She begins the film as an aspiring journalist in Oregon. She escapes her conventional marriage thanks to Reed's attentions and joins him in the Village. She finds herself way over her head, patronised and dismissed by all Reed's friends. In fact, while Reed is clearly in love with her (these scenes are some of the most wonderful I have seen depicting a free and frank adult relationship) he has no illusions about her talents and her ambitions.

As the Village de-camps to New England, Bryant finds herself abandoned by the ambitious Reed as he begins organising left-wing politicos around the US. She begins an affair with Eugene O'Neill, before abandoning him for Reed. The scenes between Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty respectively are brilliantly acted and emotionally brutal. There is a candour and authenticity that is breathtaking. Even later in the movie, when O'Neill and Bryant meet again, the conversation is as violent as a the lyrics to LIKE A ROLLING STONE. That Keaton and Nicholson did not get Oscars is an absolute crime against cinema.

The small steps by which Bryant becomes a fully-fledged wartime journalist in Europe and then Russia are all documented here. She finds her confidence as a writer and as a more equal partner to Jack. It's an utterly compelling character arc and a love story populated with real, complicated, flawed people. And what a backdrop! As the second half of REDS unfolds we find ourselves witnesses to the Bolshevik Revolution, in conversation with Lenin, Trotsky and Kerensky, and at the very edge of political action where theory becomes practice. In particular, there is a startling cameo from Jerzy Kosinski as Zinoviev.

As the movie unfolds, Beatty intersperses the action with his talking heads, or "witnesses". This helps keep the movie grounded and stops it from feeling too self-consciously "epic". As a result, unlike the more mannered melodramatic epics of the studio era, REDS does not feel dated to the modern viewer. In fact, in its depiction of the conflict between the art and politics; between career and marriage; and between sexual liberation and the need for commitment and companionship; it is as relevant to modern working men and women as it ever was.

REDS was originally released in 1981. It is available on DVD.

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