"Reds" was Warren Beatty's ambitious passion project of 1981, the film that was supposed to clean up at the Oscars that year. The Academy ended up being fairly cool toward it, giving it only three awards out of 12 nominations, but it did finally recognize Beatty for his balls if nothing else by giving him the Best Director Oscar.It's a good film that holds up well, even if it can be a bit dry at times. Beatty (Oscar nominated) is compelling as Communist revolutionary John Reed, who worked tirelessly to bring a Socialist revolution to America, but he's outshone in the acting department by Diane Keaton (also Oscar nominated), who gets a chance to shed her Woody Allen persona and prove what a good dramatic actress she could be. I could have done with less of the domestic squabbling that drags down the middle part of the film, and found the parts detailing the couple's experiences in Russia to be the most engrossing. The movie has a whopper of a running time (3 and a half hours) but even at the slower parts I never felt especially impatient with its length.Maureen Stapleton won an Oscar for her fiery performance as Emma Goldman, and Vittorio Storaro won his second Oscar for cinematography (bookended by his work on "Apocalypse Now" and "The Last Emperor"). The film's other nomination were for Best Picture, Best Actor (Beatty), Best Supporting Actor (Jack Nicholson, never especially convincing as playwright Eugene O'Neill), Best Original Screenplay, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound. Alas, no nomination for Stephen Sondheim who provided the original score.Incidentally, "Reds" became the 13th and last film to win Oscar nominations in all four acting categories until David O. Russell added back to back films number 14 and 15 with "Silver Linings Playbook" and "American Hustle." He's the only director to achieve that feat two years in a row.Grade: A

I had heard about this film many times before, specifically because it is one of only a few films to be nominated all four Academy Award acting nominations, I knew I had to see it at some point, from Oscar and Golden Globe winning director Warren Beatty (Dick Tracy). Basically the film tells the true story of radical American journalist John Reed (Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominated Warren Beatty), during the First World War and the Russian Revolution, interspersed throughout with surviving witnesses from the time periods who knew Reed, the many of the people he encountered and giving their views on his exploits. Reed met married socialite Louise Bryant (Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominated Diane Keaton) in 1915 at a lecture in Portland, Oregon, she is intrigued by his idealism, and over the course of an interview on international politics, which goes into the night, she realises writing is her only escape from the high society lifestyle. Bryant eventually leaves her husband to join Reed Greenwich Village, New York City, along with the local community of activists and artists, including anarchist and author Emma Goldman (Oscar and BAFTA winning, and Golden Globe nominated Maureen Stapleton) and the playwright Eugene O'Neill (BAFTA winning, and Oscar and Golden Globe nominated Jack Nicholson), they later move to Provincetown, Massachusetts to concentrate on their writing, and become involved in the local theatre scene. Bryant becomes a feminist and radical in her own right through her writing, while Reed becomes involved in the labor strikes of the "Reds" of the Communist Labor Party of America, he becomes obsessed with changing the world, and in 1916 grows restless and moves to St. Louis to cover the Democratic Convention, during his absence Bryant has a complicated affair with O'Neill, Reed discovers this on his return, and realises he still loves her. Reed and Bryant secretly marry and make a home in Croton-on-Hudson, north of New York City, but desires for others are still conflicting them, Reed admits to his infidelity, and Bryant leaves on a ship to Europe to be a war correspondent, while Reed has a kidney disorder and is warned not to travel excessively and cause himself stress, but ignores this to join her, they reunite as professionals and rekindle their passion, while swept into Russia's Czarist regime ans the events of the 1917 Russian Revolution. The second half of the film is set ten days after the publication of Reed's book Ten Days that Shook the World, Reed is filled with idealism and tries to bring the spirit of Communism to the United States, because he is disillusioned by the imposed policies of Grigory Zinoviev (Jerzy Kosinski) and the Bolsheviks from Communist Russia, he is imprisoned and interrogated in Finland at one point trying to leave Europe, he is eventually reunited with Bryant in Moscow, Russia at a train station, his kidney disorder however has weakened him, Bryant nurses him until his death. Also starring Edward Herrmann as Max Eastman, Gene Hackman as Pete Van Wherry, Paul Sorvino as Louis Fraina, Nicolas Coaster as Paul Trullinger, M. Emmet Walsh as Speaker at Liberal Club, Ian Wolfe as Mr. Partlow, Bessie Love as Mrs. Partlow, Ramon Bieri as Police Chief, Jack O'Leary as Pinkerton Guard, William Daniels as Julius Gerber, Dave King as Allan Benson, Joseph Buloff as Joe Volski, Shane Rimmer as MacAlpine, Miriam Margolyes as Woman Writing in Notebook and John Ratzenberger as Communist Leader. This chronicle of the man who wrote Ten Days that Shook the World works well because of the great cast and crew, including the great music by Stephen Sondheim, and the terrific attention to detail, I admit there was more chat than action, and I found it hard to follow in small places, but overall it was an interesting epic biographical drama. It won the Oscar for Best Cinematography, and it was nominated for Best Picture, Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, Best Sound and Best Film Editing, it was nominated the BAFTAs for Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design, and it was nominated the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Drama and Best Screenplay. Very good!

"Our blindness to the results of systemic violence is perhaps most clearly perceptible in debates about communist crimes. Responsibility for communist crimes is ascribed an ideological source. But when one draws attention to the millions who died as a result from capitalist globalisation, from the tragedy of Mexico in the 16th century through to the Belgian Congo holocaust, responsibility is largely denied. All this seems just to have happened as the result of an 'objective' process, which nobody planned, and for which there was no 'Capitalist Manifesto'." - Zizek "Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past." - Marx Warren Beatty stars in, produces and directs "Reds", a 1981 epic about the life and career of journalist and activist John Reed. Diane Keaton co-stars as Louise Bryant, a feminist, activist and Reed's lover.Odd for a Hollywood production, let alone one released at the dawn of Reaganism, "Reds" both deals with the Russian Revolution and is sympathetic toward communism. Much of the film thus watches as Reed mingles with unionists, communists and documents the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, the subject of his 1919 book, "Ten Days That Shook The World".One of the most ballsy moments in human history, the October Revolution essentially saw different Marxist factions allying to usurp monarchy, feudalism and nascent capitalism. After their victory, Russia found itself surrounded, invaded and then essentially sequestered for the next 70 years. Utopian dreams would collapse and she quickly become a curious hybrid: an Imperialist nation like the then-contemporary Western Empires (though much less violent, by dint of much smaller colonial holdings), a giant socialist state (bringing genuine improvements to the lives of millions), a state capitalist command economy (and so antithetical to "Marxism") and a brutal dictatorial regime (which would incrementally dissolve after the death of Joseph Stalin).A similar movement happened in the 1780s, when the disparate forces of the French Revolution, influenced by thinkers like John Locke and Jean Rousseau, toppled monarchies, late-feudalism and cooked up many of what we now term "democratic principles" and "civil rights". They also enacted numerous "radical" policies (abolishing feudal dues owed to churches and landlords, nationalising land, creating constitutions etc) which we today take for granted, as well as popularising new political terminology (and even slang; the communist term of endearment, "comrade", comes from the French Revolution). Like the Russian Revolution, these "victories" were won through much violence, before their "gains" were set back by reactionary forces. Marx would call this "Bonapartism", a term he used to refer to any situation in which counter-revolutionary military officers seize power from revolutionaries, and then use selective reformism to co-opt the radicalism of the popular classes. The term was used by Leon Trotsky to refer to Stalin's regime.From the perspective of the lower classes, the French Revolution was ultimately lost, but it instigated countless "positive" changes across Europe. On the flip-side, it also forced the ruling class to morph, adapt and develop new means of control. The Russian Revolution (and German Revolution of 1918) was likewise lost, "communism" crushed across Europe and left-wing parties or labour movements murdered in the millions across most of Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and even at home in America. Still, out of these ashes, and the ashes of crushed labour groups, came minor "positive" changes: women's and minority rights, the shortening of work days, the end of the old Empires, the rise of nationalist/independent movements etc. On the flip-side, the ruling class once again morphed and adapted.So "Reds" charts broad movements which are as old as time itself. Each human epoch tends to find humanity constructing giant energy accumulation systems (feudalism, chattel slavery, theocracy, monarchy, capitalism etc) in which social hierarchies are set up and in which man exploits man. Those with power tend to win these class conflicts, with, arguably, minor benefits coming at the end of each cycle of conflict.Most of "Reds" deals with a rocky romantic relationship between Reed and Bryant. He's dedicated to his social activism and ignores her, she's seeking some semblance of independence but wants to be noticed. By the film's end, both have learnt to simultaneously pursue their own dreams whilst also giving to others. Their relationship symbolises the film's overall message, a message which Reed explicitly lays out toward the end of the film. "You don't think a man can be an individual and be true to the collective!" Reed yells, "You don't think a man can speak for his own country and speak for the International at the same time, or love his wife and still be faithful to the revolution! You separate a man from what he loves most, and what you do is purge what's unique in him! And when you purge what's unique in him, you purge dissent. And when you purge dissent, you kill the revolution! Dissent IS revolution!" In other words, "Reds" condemns the neurotic control society which the USSR became, but nevertheless advocates a kind of hybrid of collectivism and "independence", which of course was the the theoretical intention of 19th century communism anyway.Though interesting, "Reds" is slow, overlong and at times too conventional. The film also missteps by ignoring the brutal conditions of American workers, the Russian peasantry and so forth (even contemporary capitalism has 76 percent of Western workers living paycheck to paycheck, 1.3 billion globally in extreme poverty, 850 million in starvation, and roughly 80 percent of the world living on less than ten dollars a day), which has the unintended effect of painting Beatty's band of agitators and rabble rousers as hermetically sealed academics and intellectuals without a Cause. Jack Nicholson steals the show as Eugene O'Neal, an Irish-American playwright.7.5/10 – See "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold".

You got to hand it to Warren Beatty: making a three-hour epic about the birth of America's left conscience between 1915 and 1920 is quite an accomplishment. And to think that the budget of "Reds" was funded by a major movie studio (emblematic of the very forms of capitalism the film's protagonists denounced) makes the achievement delightfully impressive. But what exactly makes the Communists in general (and John Reed in particular) so controversial that most reviewers asked themselves: "how could they make a movie about reds?" paraphrasing the tag line of Stanley Kubrick's "Lolita". After all, the Soviet Revolution was one of the most pivotal events of the last century and John Reed, who covered it through his masterpiece "Ten Days that Shook the World", was the only American to be buried in the Kremlin walls. So maybe viewers are approaching the film with the wrong mindset, the question should not be "why making a film about American communists" but "why not?" The ideals, the dreams they stood for, maybe Utopian (were they?), still deserved recognition.And recognition doesn't mean tribute, or beatification. Warren Beatty plays the journalist as a politically engaged but not flawed character, capable to display the most idealistic romanticism and then the most cynical pragmatism in the same flow of ideas. While Beatty, the actor, delivers political slogans with conviction, Beatty, the director, confronts them to their limits, to reality whether it's set in Russia or America, or to the simple fact that ideas depend on people. And the strength of "Reds" is to care about people more than ideas (which even Communism failed to consider), to portray the men and the women who believed that Communism was the closest ideology to justice and humanity, with the fairest view on the world, while America's democracy was poisoned by liberalism and money. Which leads me to my favorite line from the film, one I even used it for my own purpose: "what is WWI all about?" "Profits". I admired Reed's accurate answer but then after a second viewing, I realized that countries also fought for intangible elements such as ideals and prestige. And I'm not sure that Communists were all reason and practicality. When Reed confronts Louis Fraina (Paul Sorvino) to determine which of their parties deserves to represent the Komintern, their debate is less a conflict of ideas than a battle of egos, as we're not even supposed to grasp the little subtleties that separate them. And that's the intelligence of "Reds": provided it's a historical drama, it doesn't teach history but shows people making it and being made by it. On that level, John Reed is the first ventricle of "Reds"' heart, the second being Louise Bryant, his wife, played by Diane Keaton."Reds" poster is eloquent enough: it doesn't feature the Revolution in March, or other symbols like the red flags, the Kremlin, the hammer and the faucet, it only shows the climactic reunion of John and Louise in the famous train station sequence. Like "Gone With the Wind", "Reds" is a magnificent love story interfering with the history with the perfect balance, never does one distract from the other, but they're never separated either. Reed is torn between the pragmatism of the political activist and the romanticism of the artist, Bryant is the strong-willed intellectual, she's an artist too, but more than anything, she's a woman, exercising her free will, whether it's to embrace her husband's cause or to take him from it, for his own good. Beatty is perfect to unveil a poignant vulnerability behind his dashing looks and Keaton to hide an inspirational courage behind her quirkiness. The romance is essential to the story because it's obviously doomed, just as doomed as the red dream in America. The film is served by a wonderful gallery of supporting characters from the hard-headed Emma Goldberg (Maureen Stapleton, who'd win her Best Supporting Oscar) to the gloomy and sensually indelicate Eugene O'Neil, played by Jack Nicholson, "Reds" is a period film that create contemporary characters, appealing to us without feeling anachronistic. In fact, the tone of the film makes it fresh and modern, and I guess it's partly due to the remarkable idea of inserting testimonies from people who knew Reed and Bryant. These interviews allow the viewer to detach himself from history, to quit this sort of emphasizing posture. These names that filled historical books were people like you and I, they had their egos, their flaws, their impulses etc. They all speak with a black neutral background, and their names don't appear so we don't fall in the documentary genre, but just start seeing these "Reds" as people, not symbols. Even if "Reds" is not a documentary, it has an undeniable educational value, but it's still a big epic in the great Hollywood tradition; a film is not a book, and Beatty understood that viewers would probably lose track on the political aspect. Cinematically speaking, it features the obligatory grandiose sequences of a big-budget epic like the unforgettable Internationale singing, and the train attack yet it has its share of anticlimactic moments like John Reed's sober finale or a score that cancels off the whole 'David Lean' feel. Now, to those who still wonder why they made a film about the "Reds" :America has never been communist, but many political decisions were driven by the Red Scare (which some parts of the film deals with), the Keynesian theories of the welfare state were an alternative to Communism, the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe was strategically guided by the Cold War, not to mention McCarthyism or the Vietnam War. That Communism was doomed didn't make it any less significant in the history of America, as it was and still is the best antidote against liberalism's own excesses, those that are destroying our world today. Call it Utopian, but still, the red dream hasn't lost all its relevance.