Tuesday, June 16, 2009
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?
Today's NYTimes Best 1176 film was Sydney Lumet's film based on E L Doctrow's novel
with Timothy Hutton, Mandy Patimkin, Lyndsay Crouse, Ed Asner and some of the best character actors in film at the time.
When I was a kid, the Rosenberg trial was a huge media event.
I was in high school at the time. I think that my own family were ambiguous about the Rosenberg's guilt. I remember, particularly, my worry about the Rosenberg kids. What would happen to them.
That is the theme of this film.
Ebert, in the linked review, is all bent because the film and novel do not take a definitive position on the guilt or innocence of the Rosenbergs et. al.
As it turns out, he is wrong and they are right. Years later it was shown that at least Julius was guilty of passing data to the Russians although Ethel knew about it she did not participate. Lumet and Doctorow would have been wrong no matter how they put the case.
Besides, the film is about the kids.
They are red diaper babies, brought up in an atmosphere of high political drama. There is no equivalent for this today.
The communist party of the thirties and forties in this country was an intense commitment. Double dealing was prevalent.
I knew a woman who grew up in this ferment and she got out of it pretty well. She led a non-conformist apolitical life. But the affect was still in her. She could laugh about it but with a kind of grim set of the mouth.
These kids in the film are not the Rosenberg kids. But they are red diaper kids whose parents are put to death for conspiracy. They are made up people around similar circumstances.
We see what has happened throughout their life as the Party took precedence over family life.
In some ways this film and the novel are a catharsis for my worry and anxiety for these kids. (I have to admit that against my life policy I have read the book. "No films seen based on novels I have read and no novels read that are based on films I have seen")
Not that anything really good happens to them. It is hell.
But there is a soft positive outcome for one of them. Not the other.
I do not need to see this film again. It is not easy to watch and, as a film, I think that it does have some soft holes around what really happens with the parents and their associates. But there are no copouts as far as the kids are concerned.
I will give it a 3 out of Netflix5.
Labels: best films
