peteg's blog - noise - movies - 2011 09 03 Reds

Reds

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Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, and just briefly, Gene Hackman. Beatty directed and wrote this paean to the American journalist Jack (John) Reed, present at the birth of Red Russia, and garnered an Oscar for his efforts. Keaton got a nomination for being more-or-less a clothes horse for radical chic.

I'm not at all sure what this movie is trying to say about America and the Russian Revolution, and perhaps it is stuck in the late 70s when 1989 looked like it would never come. The ending is quite egocentric: what happened to Louise after Jack dies? Does she try to go back to the U.S. (where she would presumably be arrested) or remain in Soviet Russia? Somewhere in that 200 minutes Beatty could have told us.