Sponsored Content




Intermarkets' Privacy Policy
Support


Donate to Ace of Spades HQ!



Recent Entries
Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024
Captain Hate 2023
moon_over_vermont 2023
westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022
Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022
OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published. Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me
Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups

NoVaMoMe 2024: 06/08/2024
Arlington, VA
Details to follow


Texas MoMe 2024: 10/18/2024-10/19/2024 Corsicana,TX
Contact Ben Had for info





















« Iraqi Immigrant On Trial In Phoenix For Murdering Daughter For Becoming Too Westernized | Main | My Personal Budget »
January 26, 2011

Hollywood Finally Makes A Movie About the Soviet Gulag

Two apologies: 1, I knocked The King's Speech as some sort of trivial royal afterschool special, based on my general dislike of this kind of movie.

Not so, everyone who's seen it has told me. In fact, they say it's pretty great (and sort of conservative in theme).

2, I snarked that "The Way Back" would win some other award (best make-up) just because it has a good title. I shouldn't have been so snarky -- it's a pretty important movie, and an example of real balls and truth-telling about truths people don't want to hear.

I haven't found any reviews, so far, that hail this as Hollywood's first Gulag movie, perhaps because hardly anyone noticed that there weren't any before. Weir told me that many in Hollywood were surprised by the story: They'd never heard of Soviet concentration camps, only German ones. "If you need to explain what a film is about," the film is in trouble - and this one almost was. Weir had difficulties getting it distributed and some problems explaining the final scene to his financial backers.

Yet that final scene is exactly what makes this movie "real": Instead of returning home at the end of his harrowing journey, the hero is shown "walking" across time - across the Soviet occupation of Central Europe, across the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Prague Spring of 1968 - finally returning home to Poland only after communism collapses. The absence of an instant happy ending also bothered some of the film's reviewers, even though, in "real life," there were no happy endings for anyone who lived in the eastern half of Europe after the end of the Second World War. People who escaped from the Gulag, survived the war or evaded the Holocaust didn't necessarily live happily ever after. Perhaps that's a truth too difficult to learn from a movie.

They don't know what they don't know, as they are fond of saying of others.

Incidentally, the escape route is depicted as it actually happened (except, I think, the author of the books claims he escaped this way, but really it was three other people who told him about it), and makes for a hell of a movie, I think: They escaped Siberia by trekking south through the Himalayas into British controlled India.

That movie's out in theaters now, by the way. Directed by heavy-hitter Peter Weir and with some A-list actors (Colin Ferrel, Ed Harris), it sounds like it's good.

Awwww, Nuts: A review of the movie, stating its gripping and horrifying with no "triumph-of-the-human-spirit comfort." That is, just a long, hard slog.

But the "aww" gets at what I was picking up in Anne Applebaum's defense of the movie: Apparently much of it is untrue. Not the Gulag stuff, but the escape stuff. The original account (published in 1956) includes what seems to be an encounter in the Himalayas with... yeti, for example. (That is not in the movie.)

That's a shame. Because mixing fiction with fact will just give leftists reason to do what they were probably going to do anyway, ignore the fact.


digg this
posted by Ace at 11:44 AM

| Access Comments




Recent Comments
garrett: ">>Virgin Rock. I think she's originally German. Sh ..."

Philip: "[i]107 We Baptists can drink alcohol...[/i] Spi ..."

tubal: "111 We Baptists can drink alcohol... Posted by: t ..."

Catch Thirty-Thr33: "There's one Harpist that does those and I can watc ..."

Way, Way Downriver [/i][/b]: "Any truth to the claim that minutes after Trump pa ..."

illiniwek: ""Guilty as hell, free as a bird" Obama's ghost ..."

Diogenes: "We Baptists can drink alcohol... Posted by: tubal ..."

OrangeEnt: "Yeah, I don't get those either. You can tell the " ..."

iHeart Radio: "There’s a podcast about people who give no s ..."

pookysgirl, Rush Baby: "Podcasts are just radio talk shows, with video. ..."

tubal: "We Baptists can drink alcohol... ..."

garrett: "I like the reaction videos done by the Classical M ..."

Recent Entries
Search


Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Top Top Tens
Greatest Hitjobs

The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon
A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates
Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny
More Margaret Cho Abuse
Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny
Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman
Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format
John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia
World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading
Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree
Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears
Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed"
Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility
Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips
They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan
Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq
Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town
When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool
What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means
Wonkette's Stand-Up Act
Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour
Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64