Reds follows the lives of American journalist John 'Jack' Reed and his wife, Louise Bryant, amidst the background of the Bolshevik Revolution. It's an interesting, enjoyable epic with several good performances by Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Paul Sorvino, Jerzy Kosinski, and other good actors in cameo roles. The movie has been sold as a romantic epic, and indeed shows a good deal of the difficult, complex relationship between Jack and Louise.
But I think director Warren Beatty just used this as bait for the real interesting story of Reds, which is the way Jack becomes more and more involved in the Revolution to the point that he becomes one of the Party's members and an influential speaker.
The movie starts shortly before Louise meets Jack, in an interview, and immediately they feel an attraction for each other that leads her to abandon her husband and come live with Jack in New York. The first hour of the movie emphasizes their relationship mostly, especially the love affair between Louise and playwright Eugene O'Neill, and the effect Jack's work, which kept him away from her for long periods, had on their love.
It is when Jack invites Louise to travel with him to Russia to cover the Revolution, that the movie becomes fascinating and marks a turning point in his life as he stops being a man reporting news to being a man involved in History, in the creation of news.
Although it's clear that Beatty has love for the character he's playing, he nevertheless paints a disillusioned portrait of the Revolution and shows how quickly and easily it started going wrong. The hunger, the lack of fuel, the rise of oppression, are captured in this movie. And as a testament to his courage, he never allows Jack to have doubts or regrets. When the character Emma Goldman observes how the revolution has betrayed its own values, he makes a passionate speech about ends justifying means. Seldom do we witness such inflexibility and callousness in lead characters, not to mention one played by a star like Warren Beatty. But even though Jack remains faithful to the revolution, Beatty doesn't shy away from showing how he was used by it and gives the impression that Jack was involved in something that was too big for him.
In the acting department, this movie is flawless. Maureen Stapleton didn't impress me enough in her role of Emma Goldman, but Nicholson, Keaton and Beatty were all wonderful. Nicholson was very little in the movie, but the few minutes he was in were hypnotic. And Keaton showed just how easily she can transmit feelings with just her eyes and body language.
I'd also like to commend the work of director of photography Vittorio Storaro. I've been a fan of him for a while now. The images he captured in movies like The Conformist or The Spider's Stratagem have never left my mind due to their beauty. And his work in Reds was quite good too. In the first forty minutes his camera seemed sedate, but then he slowly starts showing that style that has made him one of the best DPs in the world: the way he captures colors, the composition of his shots, the symmetry in them. When the action changes to Russia, it becomes especially memorable.
The movie is not always engaging, sometimes it's dull. The pacing is uneven, and hardly helped by the intrusive moments with witnesses talking about the events in the movie. Sadly they're not identified and their relationship with the characters is never explained. It's an interesting, risky choice that I think didn't succeed. Otherwise, Reds is good movie to watch, a marvel of film-making that is also an interesting recreation of a historical episode that reshaped our world.
But I think director Warren Beatty just used this as bait for the real interesting story of Reds, which is the way Jack becomes more and more involved in the Revolution to the point that he becomes one of the Party's members and an influential speaker.
The movie starts shortly before Louise meets Jack, in an interview, and immediately they feel an attraction for each other that leads her to abandon her husband and come live with Jack in New York. The first hour of the movie emphasizes their relationship mostly, especially the love affair between Louise and playwright Eugene O'Neill, and the effect Jack's work, which kept him away from her for long periods, had on their love.
It is when Jack invites Louise to travel with him to Russia to cover the Revolution, that the movie becomes fascinating and marks a turning point in his life as he stops being a man reporting news to being a man involved in History, in the creation of news.
Although it's clear that Beatty has love for the character he's playing, he nevertheless paints a disillusioned portrait of the Revolution and shows how quickly and easily it started going wrong. The hunger, the lack of fuel, the rise of oppression, are captured in this movie. And as a testament to his courage, he never allows Jack to have doubts or regrets. When the character Emma Goldman observes how the revolution has betrayed its own values, he makes a passionate speech about ends justifying means. Seldom do we witness such inflexibility and callousness in lead characters, not to mention one played by a star like Warren Beatty. But even though Jack remains faithful to the revolution, Beatty doesn't shy away from showing how he was used by it and gives the impression that Jack was involved in something that was too big for him.
In the acting department, this movie is flawless. Maureen Stapleton didn't impress me enough in her role of Emma Goldman, but Nicholson, Keaton and Beatty were all wonderful. Nicholson was very little in the movie, but the few minutes he was in were hypnotic. And Keaton showed just how easily she can transmit feelings with just her eyes and body language.
I'd also like to commend the work of director of photography Vittorio Storaro. I've been a fan of him for a while now. The images he captured in movies like The Conformist or The Spider's Stratagem have never left my mind due to their beauty. And his work in Reds was quite good too. In the first forty minutes his camera seemed sedate, but then he slowly starts showing that style that has made him one of the best DPs in the world: the way he captures colors, the composition of his shots, the symmetry in them. When the action changes to Russia, it becomes especially memorable.
The movie is not always engaging, sometimes it's dull. The pacing is uneven, and hardly helped by the intrusive moments with witnesses talking about the events in the movie. Sadly they're not identified and their relationship with the characters is never explained. It's an interesting, risky choice that I think didn't succeed. Otherwise, Reds is good movie to watch, a marvel of film-making that is also an interesting recreation of a historical episode that reshaped our world.