Yesterday I promised to write regularly about that infamous year, 1968, from the  perspective of the forty years that have passed.  I was there for so much of it and have wanted to re-think it for some time but could never seem to face it in its entirety.  Among other things, it’s the year I graduated from college.  And worked in the McCarthy campaign.  And was present at the Chicago "police riot" at the Democratic Convention.  I’m going to do it – I promise. 

But last night’s insomnia led to the two of us watching Reds, Warren Beatty’s remarkable film about John Reed, Louise Bryant, Greenwich Village radicals, Eugene O’Neill, Emma Goldman and left wing intellectual life before and during World War I.
At the end of what was, in the theaters, the first act, there’s a wonderful montage. John Reed (Warren Beatty) gives an impassioned speech, revolutionaries begin to sing the "Internationale" and the film cuts between scenes of political passions and those of the passions, both physical and intellectual, between Reed and Louise Bryant.  To me, it’s the perfect metaphor for our lives in 1968 — shared political passions even with the most intense of lovers – inextricably combined with personal passions intensified by the sadness, rage and sense of mission brought on by events – in their case the attempt to build a "workers paradise" in  Russia, on ours, the war in Vietnam.  The YouTube clip of this beautiful five minutes won’t post outside YouTube – it’s been blocked, but you can see it here.  In the meantime, watch the trailer and think about what it’s like when life, love and politics intersect with such precision.

 

Reds – Reds

Posted Apr 30, 2002

Warren Beatty’s award winning epic mixes drama and interviews with major social radicals of the period. "Reds" tells the story of the love affair between activists Louise Bryant and John Reed.       Set against the backdrop of the tumultuous start of the twentieth century, the two journalists’ on-again off-again romance is punctuated by the outbreak of WWI and the Bolshevik Revolution. Louise’s assignment in France at the outbreak of the war puts an end to their affair. John Reed’s subsequent trip to Russia