Reds
directed by Warren Beatty, 1981.
An acquaintance of mine recommended this film back in October or November when it was finally released on DVD. He claimed Reds was his favorite movie and that I had to had to had to see it. This fellow and I don’t often have the same taste, and I’m eternally skeptical of Warren Beatty, but I threw it in my Netflix cue anyway.
They dropped the two discs (its a 194-minute film) into my mailbox December 15, and it has taken me until two nights ago to finally watch it. Yes, I’m one of those people that maintain Netflix’s profit margin.
First, I want to give props to cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (who also shot Apocalypse Now) and production designer Richard Sylbert (of Chinatown fame). The film looked fantastic. Storaro really pulled out all the stops on the lighting design. In fact, at points I’d say it even gets excessive. As if he decided that since the movie was so long, with such diverse locale, he would jam every technique he knew into it. One part where the lighting was lovely but obvious was during a scene in Jack (Warren Beatty) and Louise’s (Diane Keaton) New York apartment, during their first major spat. It’s raining outside and the windows have crotcheted curtains, so the amber light (presumably from streetlamps) from outside throws dripping patterns onto the walls, the furniture, and over Louise’s distressed face. Beautiful. Far from subtle.
Still, for most the movie the lighting and sets were just lovely, especially at the beachhouse, where the light played off the set perfectly. There, a nice nuance of shadow and brightness played in the backgrounds, warm-toned and low-key, owing itself to The Godfather and Gordon Willis.
So, one might say about the film’s “look” that though beautiful, it lacked focus, and the same seems to be true of the script. Perhaps this is just my personal preference speaking, but I really felt that Reds was more Louise’s story than Jack’s. She absolutely stole the film away from him, if it could even be said it was his to begin with (we do open and close with Louise). Unfortunately, Warren Beatty and co-writer Trevor Griffiths crafted the film as a Warren Beatty vehicle, giving his character, John “Jack” Reed prominence. But Jack didn’t have the character arc. He didn’t have the inner turmoil. In the end, though perhaps slightly disenchanted with how the revolution turned out, he was still the same idealistic, outspoken charmer that he was in the beginning.
Louise presented the audience with a bit more complexity. She was a woman who felt this desperate need for independence, to assert herself as an autonomous woman, to create work for her sake and for the sake of itself. Yet, she didn’t quite know exactly who herself was. She hadn’t managed to formulate her identity, so her assertions came off as vacuous. She asserted herself, but in not knowing herself, asserted nothing. So then much of her journey is in discovering her work, her purpose, what it means for her to be her own woman. She finds this when they go to Russia, and it is not until this trip that she stops being defensive about her prose and starts completing stories. Once she finds herself, she can commit herself to Jack without reservation.
Wonderful character. I only regret that the film didn’t delve more deeply into her inner struggle, because so much more could’ve been done with a character such as her. But then, I suppose, it would’ve been a very different film.
The inclusion of the witnesses, I thought was a nice touch. Henry Miller is the only one I recognized right off, the rest (including Jack and Louise) I’ve been looking up. Such an interesting period! And I really don’t know enough about it.
