VEILED THREATS by Phil Mershon
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ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVOCH
Directed by Caspar Wrede
Written by Ronald Harwood
Starring Tom Cortenay
Released in 1970
Picture
By now most of us are familiar with  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. You may not know that in 1970 a film adaptation of the book was released. Directed by Caspar Wrede and shot in northern Norway, the film was banned in Finland until 1993 for fear on the part of the Finnish government that the movie would hurt relations between Russia and Finland. This film sticks quite closely to the author's fictionalization of his own time as a prisoner in a Stalin-era Soviet gulag. 
    The movie is not much fun. 
     It is, however, excellent propaganda.
     I avoided reading the book for years and avoided even more strenuously viewing the film, not because I didn't believe the author's narrative, but rather because I did believe it and suspected that if anything he might have downplayed certain matters. I resisted the book and film because I already understood that these two things would cause me to hate totalitarian systems even more than I already hate them and yet somehow that never stopped me from reading about the Nazis or watching movies about the Holocaust. So what exactly was my problem?
    I'm on the left. There is no sense denying that. 
    What bothered me was being reminded that my pro-government, pro-bureaucracy, pro-collectivist proclivities could turn into the type of nightmare Wrede so magnificently conveys in the film. The things I believe in are not supposed to turn into bad dreams. And yet they unquestionably do, just about every day. 
    Mitt Romney was on camera a couple weeks ago, getting fresh with an Occupy supporter about how if the supporter didn't like things in the United States he was free to go live somewhere else and let us know how he liked it elsewhere. That made me mad and I fired off a letter to Romney that suggested he himself might enjoy spending this summer in an internment camp in Cuba. I have yet to hear back.
    But I meant what I said, which is more than the presidential candidate can claim. The old saw about "love it or leave it" still burns, just as he knew it would, which is why he said it, which is why I responded, which is why I watched this film. 
    The reason utopias turn into dystopias is because dreams make lousy realities. When the Soviets declare that the sun is at its peak at 1pm rather than noon, Ivan wonders if the commissars can actually make that happen. Whenever any of my leftist friends (or myself) demand the overthrow of the capitalist economic system, we need to be prepared to defend the people involved in that overthrow from the smirking evil that lies behind the misery any economic system is capable of instilling, be it social democratic, communist, libertarian, or what have you, because once the real life nightmare takes hold, it does not allow you to wake up. The people in One Day in the Life do not look forward to the sunrise. One of them even looks forward to blizzards to avoid having to go out into the weather. In the film, if the temperature drops below forty degrees below zero, they do not have to go out. A man climbs the pole to see the temperature, reporting that it says only twenty-seven below. the other replies, "They's never but up a thermometer that told the truth."
    Or you may recall the first sentence of Orwell's most famous novel, the one that begins with the clock striking thirteen. It's part of an old joke. What time is it when the clock strikes thirteen? It is time to get a new clock. Just make sure the new clock doesn't make a habit of striking fourteen.
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  • Home
  • Links
  • The Deluge
    • Veiled Threats >
      • 1939-1945
      • 1946-1963
      • 1964-1975
      • 1976-1985
      • Born Losers
      • Don't Look Back
      • Bonnie and Clyde
      • Cool Hand Luke
      • The Graduate
      • Up Tight!
      • Cycle Savages
      • Wild in the Streets
      • Never a Dull Moment
      • Yellow Submarine
      • Night of the Living Dead
      • Faces
      • The Love Bug
      • Midnight Cowboy
      • Easy Rider
      • Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
      • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
      • They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
      • The Magic Christian
      • Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
      • The Landlord
      • The Ballad of Cable Hogue
      • Getting Straight
      • The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
      • Five Easy Pieces
      • Godard in America
      • Gimme Shelter
      • Little Big Man
      • The Boys in the Band
      • Joe
      • The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
      • The Big Boss
      • There's a Girl in my Soup
      • The Liberation of L B Jones
      • Klute
      • The French Connection
      • Willie Dynamite
      • Helter Skelter
      • King: A Filmed Record
      • Get Carter
      • Harold and Maude
      • Panic in Needle Park
      • Across 110th Street
      • And Soon the Darkness
      • Deliverance
      • Rolling Thunder
      • Super Fly
      • Busting
      • The Ruling Class
      • The Harder They Come
      • Day of the Jackal
      • Play Misty For Me
      • The Jezebels
      • Sacco & Vanzetti
      • Badlands
      • Cold Turkey
      • Soldier Blue
      • American Graffiti
      • The Falcon and the Snowman
      • Watership Down
      • Scarecrow
      • Walking Tall
      • Frances
      • The Coca-Cola Kid
      • Bob Roberts
      • Bad Company
      • We Are Marshall
      • Patton
      • The Natural
      • The Crossing Guard
      • Reds
      • The Spook Who Sat by the Door
      • Mud
      • Who is Harry Nilsson
      • Ornette: Made in America
      • Six Degrees of Separation
      • This Film is Not Yet Rated
      • Incident at Oglala
      • That Championship Season
      • The Pope of Greenwich Village
      • Little Murders
      • Assault on Precinct 13
      • Capote
      • Inglourious Basterds
      • The Friends of Eddie Coyle
      • Scorpio
      • The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
      • A New Leaf
      • Seven Psychopaths
      • The Last House on the Left
      • The Deer Hunter
      • Let the Right One In
      • Colour Me Kubrick
      • A Time to Kill
      • A Scanner Darkly
      • Salem's Lot
      • Roman Polanksi: Wanted and Desired
      • The Seven-Ups
      • The Contender
      • Hoffa
      • The Pledge
      • American: The Bill Hicks Story
      • Donnie Brasco
      • Bugsy
      • Milk
      • Reservoir Dogs
      • Glengarry Glen Ross
      • V for Vendetta
      • Trumbo
      • Two in the Wave
      • South of the Border
      • Into the Abyss
      • God Bless America
  • Before the Deluge
    • The Bicycle Thief
    • Judgment at Nuremberg
    • Five Minutes to Live
    • The Manchurian Candidate
    • Hud
    • Pressure Point
    • Blow Up
    • Requiem for a Heavyweight
    • Hurry Sundown
  • Human Flood
    • Jean-Luc Godard >
      • Breathless
      • Masculine Feminine
      • Film Socialisme
    • Brian De Palma >
      • Sisters
      • The Fury
    • Stanley Kubrick >
      • Lolita
      • 2001: A Space Odyssey
      • A Clockwork Orange
      • The Shining
      • Full Metal Jacket
    • Francis Coppola >
      • The Conversation
      • Apocalypse Now
    • Woody Allen >
      • Take the Money and Run
      • Bananas
      • Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But were Afraid to Ask
      • Sleeper
      • Love and Death
      • Annie Hall
      • Interiors
      • Manhattan
      • Stardust Memories
      • Zelig
      • Broadway Danny Rose
      • The Purple Rose of Cairo
      • Hannah and Her Sisters
      • Radio Days
    • Robert Altman >
      • M*A*S*H
      • Brewster McCloud
      • 3 Women
      • Nashville
      • The Gingerbread Man
      • Ready to Wear
      • Gosford Park
      • The Player
    • Luis Bunuel >
      • The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
    • Roman Polanski >
      • Cul-de-Sac
      • Rosemary's Baby
      • MacBeth
      • The Tenant
    • Martin Scorsese >
      • Boxcar Bertha
    • Steven Spielberg >
      • Duel
    • Oliver Stone >
      • Talk Radio
    • Orson Welles >
      • F For Fake
    • Akira Kurosawa >
      • DODES'KA-DEN
    • Max Ophuls
    • John Ford >
      • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
    • John Huston
    • Frank Capra
    • Billy Wilder
    • Roger Corman
    • Bernardo Bertolucci
    • Elia Kazan
    • William Wyler
    • Spike Lee
    • Francois Truffaut >
      • 400 Blows
      • Jules and Jim
      • Bed and Board
    • Jean Renoir
    • Federico Fellini
    • Charlie Chaplin
    • John Cassavetes
    • Agnes Vargas
    • Alain Resnais
    • Eric Rohmer >
      • Claire's Knee
    • Ida Lupino
    • Leni Riefenstahl
    • Penny Marshall
    • Costa-Gavras >
      • The Confession
      • Missing
    • Alfred Hitchcock >
      • Spellbound
      • Shadow of a Doubt
      • The Birds
      • I Confess
      • Dial M for Murder
      • Rear Window
      • To Catch a Thief
      • The Wrong Man
      • Suspicion
      • Saboteur
      • Lifeboat
      • Notorious
      • Rope
      • North by Northwest
      • Psycho
      • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
  • No Particular Place to Go
  • The Pits
    • The Big Chill
    • W. C. Fields and Me
    • Zabriskie Point
    • Eat The Document
    • Hitler: The Last Ten Days
    • A Boy and His Dog
    • A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
    • The Executioner's Song
    • The Visitors
    • Paul McCartney Really is Dead
    • Going Places
    • Pi
    • Erik the Viking
    • Sometimes They Come Back
    • Thinner
    • Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
    • A Bullet for Pretty Boy
  • Links