I'd never seen Reds. I was in a line waiting with some friends and got fed up and left. So I watched it last night. Dianne Keaton gives me hemorroids. Warren Beaty was just as bad. Jack Nickleson as Eugene O'Neal was slightly better. It was nice to hear the witnesses. The guy I liked best looked like the old comedian Bert Lear. Maureen Stapleton was very good. You have to wonder what she was doing all those years with Archie Bunker.
But you know, Hollywood just can't do Revolution. It's impossible. And it's made even worse now that I've read through Trotsky. Trotsky cites Reed a few times with approval.
What was amazing in My Life were the occasional domestic scenes and problems. He and Natallia had two boys who were about ten and twelve wondering around in and out of the various demostrations from April to October. Occasonal family dinners they discussed what the boys thought and how their day went. The parents didn't like the private school, so they changed over to a Peoples School of some sort run by the left where the boys were accepted better although the instruction was not as good. The real crack down came in summer. So LD and Natallia decided to take the boys out of Petrograd for safety reasons.
In other sections LD reflects on his kids abilities to learn languages in their travels in exile. First German with an Austrian accent, then French, briefly some Spanish, finally starting English, then Russian.
That would have made a better movie. Some of the scenes in My Life were near cinemagraphic.
CG