Reds and A Passage to India, released a few years, later represent the last of the old style Hollywood epics, before Gladiator and its decendants brought the genre back in vouge with faster editing and CGI effects. And Reds is a great way to go out. It has an intelligence rarely found in American films, expecting the audince to pay attention for three and a half hours to a complicated and esoteric subject that most people know little about.
That subject is John Reed (Beatty) and his role in the early Communist movement in America. Reed is famed, as they tell you at the beginning of the film, as the only American to be buried in the Kremlin. He made early fame as a journalist, marrying feminist Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton). The film chronicles their personal relationship with Reed's increasing political activity, eventually leading his own faction in a break from the American Socalist Party, the writing of Reed's masterpiece, Ten Days that Shook the World and a truly epic act of love from Louise.
The movie covers an awful lot of ground. I had never heard of Reed and new next to nothing about the American Socialist movement but Beatty (in addition to acting and directing, he produced and co-wrote the script) features a parade of historic characters and crucial events, making them all understandable and entertaining. I particularly liked Jack Nicholson as playwright Eugene O'Neil (who wrote Anna Christie), sitting back and observing everything with a detached, cyncal bemusment. The gorgeous visuals from my favotite cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro, help draw is into a world that is now past.
The movie is intelligent, too. I don't think a better film has been made about left-wing politics. There is the central paradox: why are the people who are most interested in the well being of the poor upper-middle class intellectuals? It presents its characters as well meaning, but flawed. Reed basically wants a utopia on Earth and is amazed and critically disappointed when reality does meet up with his ideals, both in his marridge (both partners agree to extra-marretial sex and both end up feeling betrayed), and politics (he can't believe that the Soviet government is corrupt). At the same time, it supports his ideas for a brotherhood of man, but comes to the conclusion that they may only be that- nice but unworkable ideas. Of course, this was too much for many conservatives, who argued the movie was liberal propaganda.
This is a sort of American Doctor Zhivago, as it has both the political intrigue and romatic intereste of that film. It is a great movie. It's a shame that Beatty has made only three other films as director, on the basis of this, he should be working every year.
Reds (1981)