MovieChat Forums > Reds (1981) Discussion > How annoying and absurd

How annoying and absurd


That all the extraordinary people being interviewed throughout the film are NOT IDENTIFIED!!! What the hell is the point?

Warren out-thinking himself.

Stupid.

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"Like"

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If you look at the credits you can tell which ones are the ones being interviewed because they have the same names as their characters. In other words they play themselves. They all seem to be prominent leftists from the old days who were still alive at that time. One of them was Roger Baldwin, who founded the ACLU. It is frustrating though that they don't identify them during the interviews. It's equally frustrating that they supported such an evil event as the Communist revolution in Russia. It's really sickening.

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It's equally frustrating that they supported such an evil event as the Communist revolution in Russia. It's really sickening.
Mate, your own country was established via violent revolution. Put yourself in someone else's shoes for a change instead of imagining yourself as the great American Revolutionary hero. Both Russia and America had been exploited by tyrants and both saw a need to rise up against them, right or wrong. What would you say to the average Russian 100 years ago? Don't rise up against that idiot Czar and that corrupt, bully-boy aristocracy? Learn to love God and your oppressors? What would you say if someone said the American Revolution was "sickening"? How was anyone to know how things would turn out? And let's not forget the Civil War. The administration of Russia and later the Soviet Union, was shaped by that war and was very different from what it was intended to be in 1917.

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Idiotic post, tedmccarron. Did you WATCH the film? Did you catch the part where Reed complains about all the power being concentrated in the hands of a few people, AFTER THE FACT? The motives were noble, it eventually turned out bad. ..

Ah, what's the point?

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I agree Hugh. It was a great story and I'm glad Beatty told it. These people didn't know how things would end up in Russia.

I would have liked to know the witnesses names as they were speaking, I guess Beatty had his reasons.

The only one I recognized was George Jessel, a comedian of the time who later was very right wing. He was the one who called Emma Goldman "Emma Goldberg" even though he knew damn well what her name was.

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