The American dream is just that, or possibly just a nightmare for many. Although this film is quite a sanitised view of the turmoil and optimism that engulfed America in the late 60's, the injustice is very real. As it is today, still.
The main characters are charming, if a bit shallow and two dimensional. The story of blatant injustice is compelling, the time flew for me. It's certainly as good as the film version of To Kill A Mockingbird, although Gregory Peck has a lot more depth than Mark Rylance, but that's obviously down to the script. Sacha Baron Cohen and Jeremy Strong are a pastiche of Cheech and Chong, just with bigger words and play it for laughs, most of the time, and they are funny. Eddy Redmayne is the privileged college kid with a conscience, who will obviously become another well paid cog in the machine he despises. Overall the acting is solid, just not that deep. Although Yahya Abdul-Mateen II's blatant mistreatment is conveyed by a real sense of anger, I could feel it.
What did I get from this film? Confirmation that nothing has changed, that the US is still a police state, that racism and classism has always been and still is institutional. It may even be worse today with a White House so blatantly crooked and incompetent; who's last option is to stoke up division and let the federal agencies run amuck and trample basic human rights. If anything it's now unpatriotic not to support war, any war, because it's 'un American'. So in one sense the nation has regressed to the basest of attitudes.
If I were a teacher I'd show this film to my class and encourage a debate about what it is to be an American. But I know there'd be a ton of parents complaining that it's un patriotic to do so.
With poverty, homelessness, lack of health care and a myriad of other issues blighting this once great country and the right to 'the pursuit of happiness' being no more than a foot note and almost forgotten entirely. We now have the blatantly political rigging of the Supreme Court, the highest in the land, Judge Hoffman would fit right in.
A must watch film, but it's probably too late now to fix such a broken system.
The main characters are charming, if a bit shallow and two dimensional. The story of blatant injustice is compelling, the time flew for me. It's certainly as good as the film version of To Kill A Mockingbird, although Gregory Peck has a lot more depth than Mark Rylance, but that's obviously down to the script. Sacha Baron Cohen and Jeremy Strong are a pastiche of Cheech and Chong, just with bigger words and play it for laughs, most of the time, and they are funny. Eddy Redmayne is the privileged college kid with a conscience, who will obviously become another well paid cog in the machine he despises. Overall the acting is solid, just not that deep. Although Yahya Abdul-Mateen II's blatant mistreatment is conveyed by a real sense of anger, I could feel it.
What did I get from this film? Confirmation that nothing has changed, that the US is still a police state, that racism and classism has always been and still is institutional. It may even be worse today with a White House so blatantly crooked and incompetent; who's last option is to stoke up division and let the federal agencies run amuck and trample basic human rights. If anything it's now unpatriotic not to support war, any war, because it's 'un American'. So in one sense the nation has regressed to the basest of attitudes.
If I were a teacher I'd show this film to my class and encourage a debate about what it is to be an American. But I know there'd be a ton of parents complaining that it's un patriotic to do so.
With poverty, homelessness, lack of health care and a myriad of other issues blighting this once great country and the right to 'the pursuit of happiness' being no more than a foot note and almost forgotten entirely. We now have the blatantly political rigging of the Supreme Court, the highest in the land, Judge Hoffman would fit right in.
A must watch film, but it's probably too late now to fix such a broken system.