The missing movies

Speaking of Hollywood, Bridget Johnson asks an excellent question in OpinionJournal: there are two more Che Guevara biopics in development (in addition to last year's Motorcycle Diaries) but where are the movies showing the horrors of life under Communism?

What feature films have showed the true nature of communism? There was "The Killing Fields," showing families torn apart, cities emptied, forced labor, bones littering the Cambodian landscape. Adding to the authenticity was its star, Oscar-winner and real-life survivor Haing S. Ngor, who would have been summarily executed had his intellectual background been discovered by the Khmer Rouge. As a cinematic achievement, it ranks as one of the best films of all time. As a historical testament, it shows that communism had nothing to do with betterment of the masses but stripped away everything that comprised the individual. Though this film should be required high-school viewing, not much else springs to mind that could counter the effects of pro-Marxist cinema.

I'll bet the big studio execs have never thought--or cared--to do a big-screen adaptation of "The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression," by Stephane Courtois, et al. The book's 1997 publishing in France touched off a firestorm of controversy--mostly from offended French commies--and it stands as an astonishing comprehensive account of what this political ideology has wreaked on mankind in less than a century. The film version of this 800-plus-page account would be excruciatingly long and painful--too long for a 32-ounce soda and too nauseating for popcorn. So since Hollywood is all about franchises now anyway, the book could be adapted into several movies, each covering a corner of the globe and that region's own unique suffering under communism.

How about a film on the Soviet Union, beginning with Lenin and the 1917 revolution, droning on to Stalin's purges with hundreds of thousands executed by firing squad, and millions forced from their homes or carted off to labor camps? We'd see Soviet bloc countries strangled under communist rule, Berlin divided with concrete and snipers, Nicolae Ceausescu destroying historic Bucharest. We'd see Soviet terror exported with the scorched-earth policy in Afghanistan.

Well, even The Killing Fields couldn't be made without Sam Waterston giving a big speech blaming Nixon for the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Aside from that and the immortal Red Dawn, I can't think of many other Hollywood productions showing the sheer drudgery and despair of life in the Worker's Paradise. (Kolya and Farewell my Concubine are great, but they're foreign films.)

So why hasn't Gang of One or Ayn Rand's We the Living (made in Italy in 1942, albeit bastardized by Mussolini) been produced yet? Maybe it would force Hollywood to concede that, despite the excesses and blacklisting of the McCarthy era, the man may have had a point.

Posted by damian at March 30, 2005 07:19 PM