dierregi
This is one of those great epic movies that for mysterious reasons are never shown on TV and are pretty much forgotten / unknown by the general public. It manages to mix successfully a love story with its turbulent historical background, in a way that I found even more convincing and less sentimental than Doctor Zhivago.I had the chance to watch it again after many years and I was truly surprised by how good it still is. It tells the story of John Reed - one of the very few foreigners buried in the Kremlin - and his turbulent relation with Louise Bryant. Particularly moving are the interviews with the "witnesses" that form the backbone of the movie. These people were Reed and Bryant's contemporaries, all in their late 70s/early 80s when the movie was shot, and some admit candidly to hardly remember Reed and Bryant.The movie starts with some witnesses speaking and then we are shown Reed and Bryant's first, awkward meeting, while Bryant was still married to her first husband. Soon the two move together in New York, while the anti-war movement is campaigning against the US entering WWI.Reed had already an adventurous past as field journalist and decided that WWI was a capitalistic war. He was intrigued by the Russian events in 1917 and managed to be in Moscow during the turbulent days of the Bolshevik revolution. Bryant - who had married him in the meanwhile - was with him. They both wrote books about those adventurous days.Back in the US the couple split up, with Reed wanting to be more involved with the Communist party and Bryant not so keen. There were also infidelities on both sides, hers with Eugene O'Neill. It was quite moving to see young Keaton and Nicholson playing Bryant and O'Neill. It made me think of their uneasy romance in "Something's got to give"...Anyway, Reed ends up in Russia again in 1919 and then imprisoned in Finland for wanting to leave Russia. Bryant decides to help him and starts an epically dangerous journey. In the meantime, Reed has been freed and is forced to campaign in the USSR, while his health is slowly deteriorating. When the two finally meet at Moscow station, you have a truly moving moment, not exploited in any sugary, sentimental way. The bitter end is however around the corner.Definitely Beatty best work, both as an actor and as a director - for which he got a well deserved Oscar. Keaton also deserved it, for her portrayal of Bryant. She was nominated but the Oscar for leading actress went to Katharine Hepburn. In the same year the other contenders were Streep and Sarandon - some fierce competition, not like nowadays.... The movie was robbed from winning best picture by the more conventional "Chariots of fire".
evanston_dad
"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
lasttimeisaw
Warren Beatty's biographical saga about Jack Reed (1887-1920), a radical USA journalist, a fervent advocate of IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), and the author of TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD, running over 3 hours. REDS, scored 12 Oscar nominations (with 3 wins) and finally won Beatty an Oscar for BEST DIRECTOR among a combined 14 nominations throughout his eminent career so far (as actor, director, screen-writer and producer), undeniably can be reckoned as his most enterprising and taxing project, and is also notorious for its behind-the-scene stories such as Beatty's extravagant conceit in the director's chair and his off-screen romance with co-star Keaton (which ended right before the extended shooting days).Political elements aside, REDS quintessentially is an ode to the undying love between Jack Reed and his wife Louise Bryant (Keaton), also a radical journalist, since during most of its lengthy narrative, the latter is the unaltered focus of this epic and Beatty assiduously tells their relationship from her angle. Due to the similar political slant, they attract to each other almost instantly, when WWI edges to its end. But being labeled as an " exhibitionist" because of her feminist stance, Louise suffers from frustration to be taken seriously for her work as a writer and abetted by Jack's constant absence due to his job, she starts off a romance with Eugene O'Neill (Nicholson, who steals the limelight assertively with his trenchant dissection of their ménage à trois), the Nobel laureate playwright and their common friend, in spite of their vastly conflicting political standings. Things go downhill after they get married when monogamy stands in the way of their life, selfishly and immaturely Louise uses Eugene to get back at Jack, only to be taken aback by Jack's philandering notion of partnership.They separate for a while, until in 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution, becomes the essential catalyst of their undimmed love, witnessing the revolution in the front row, and realising what a sea change their Socialist belief can make in the war-trodden foreign land, they work shoulder-to-shoulder as comrades, write first-hand reports of the revolution and return to USA with an evolutionarily reshaped prospect of life, which is also where their political ideologies diverge.Jack passionately throws himself into politics, to bring Communism to his native soil, against the widespread fear that it would also usurp the democratic government of United States, whereas Louise hold a different opinion towards the issue, as she claims, she is deeply inspired by the Russian revolution and how proletariat can stand up and takes the regime, but she is also clear- minded about the fact that it is completely another situation for socialism to bloom here in America. Soon the schism emerges in the budding but vulnerable socialist party, their love is under another critical test when Jack defies Louise's advice and accepts the assignment to go to Moscow and seek endorsement from Grigory Zinoviev (acclaimed writer Kosinski in his first film role) for his party. His journey turns out to be a disaster, he is briefly incarcerated in Finland and then as an exchanged hostage, he stays with the communist party in Russia and stands for a mouthpiece of the socialism in USA, but soon grows increasingly disillusioned with Zinoviev's policies, meanwhile his health deteriorates drastically, a final reunion with Louise seems to be an immense mercy for him.Beatty painstakingly interposes interviews of more than thirty real-life "witnesses" who personally know Jack and Louise into the chronicle account, sometimes as a voice-over juxtaposing with the story, offering sound-bites and tidbits to enrich our perspectives of them and a larger social background at then. The documentary approach is quite risky, not only it adds considerable length to the already protracted magnitude, it also takes a chance with a more elaborate editing process in the post-production, how come it failed to nab the editing trophy in the Oscar?REDS received four acting nominations in four categories, firstly, Beatty is apparently too old for the role (Reed dies at the age of 33, while Beatty was already over 40 during the filming), but if one is not familiar with the archetype, his very sympathetic portrayal is fairly engaging, we can feel for Jack's idealistic enthusiasm, his intense affection to Louise (there are at least three sex scenes to prove his prowess, even after he loses one kidney), and the root of his tragedy - his erudite perception of the society fatally conflicts with his simplistic modus operandi. Keaton, by comparison, really busts her chops to embody Louise as a flawed but flesh-and-blood human being, sometimes she is wilful, vexatious, self-contradictory, other times, she is lucid, gallant and endearing, all reflect from her imperfect visage, this is her best dramatic performance to date.As charismatic as Nicholson, the only Oscar winner among the quartet is Maureen Stapleton, finally paid her due for her fourth attempt in the category, she plays Emma Goldman, the no bullshit anarchist, whose limited presence seems rather paltry against the film's duration, and she is not even a key player in the game, but whenever she is on the screen, Stapleton seizes every opportunity to remind viewers of her progressive thinking and truculent spirit, all intrigues us to know her character more, when will be a biography film about her? Emma Thompson can nail that role. All in all, this film is an important cinematic legacy which conducts a non-judgmental and thorough account on a highly contentious topic at a tumultuous time through the lives of Jack and Louise, a commendable extravaganza, probably Beatty's best work in any aspect, and I have a taxi waiting, now...
jbirks106
Perhaps it's inevitable that "Reds" became a kind of Rorschach test when it first appeared. Liberals, meaning almost all of Hollywood, could still feel a twinge of nostalgia for those heady Bolshie days, while conservatives recoiled at any attempt to humanize Americans who even Woodrow Wilson considered traitors. But it's over 30 years later, and the Jack Reeds and Emma Goldmans seem almost quaint today. So too do the Warren Beattys and Diane Keatons, and the limousine liberalism they embody. Viewed at this distance, "Reds" is neither a masterpiece nor a piece of agitprop, just a very long, very good but rather flawed movie. And in fact it's surprisingly frank about who Reed was, and what the Bolsheviks were. In a late scene between Reed and Goldman, the latter is utterly disgusted with what the Reds have become, complaining that they are just as fascistic as the crew they replaced, and the people are just as bad off because "nothing works!" Reed is not listening. Revolutions take time, and they need a little terror to keep those pesky counterrevolutionaries in line.In the end, however, this is a love story. Does it work? That depends how hard you think about it. Louise is always chasing after Jack, hating herself for it, leaving him, going back to him, rinse repeat. It gets a bit repetitive. The final scene makes no sense to me at all, even though it's been telegraphed for the preceding 2 1/2 hours. Luckily the chemistry between Beatty and Keaton holds it together.Thank god for the testimonials, a surprisingly effective device which served to dispense with a lot of exposition. Otherwise this would've been a 6-hour movie.
