Product: The Trotsky
Rating: 5.0
Funny, thoughtful, and entertaining look at political activism
This is one of my favourite films of the past decade. Good work by writer/director Jacob Tierney. I'd originally thought of rating it 4.5 stars, but am bumping it up on the strength of the DVD extras. It's brainy enough that a neo-marxist reading list wouldn't be out of place here (perhaps for the director's cut?), but there are also some funny bits of physical comedy -- and Baruchel succeeds in making the precocious teenaged activist Leon Bronstein likable and very human. You don't have to be a history buff or a Canadian to enjoy this ... though there are a few hilarious in-jokes (references to Levesque, Parizeau, and the city of London Ontario) that had even west coast audiences laughing out loud. There are some superb supporting performances here from longtime veterans like Bujold, Feore, Rubinek, and Murphy, as well as younger actors like Mabe, Horn, Pirie, and Camacho. Even Ben Mulroney makes an appearance.Alongside the comedy and romantic moments, the film raises some interesting questions about commitment to social change -- will Leon's idealism inspire his society, or will he become complacent or disillusioned like some of the older 60s generation he encounters? This film is really more about the soft-left perspective than about the darker side of political revolutions in the 20th century, which have already been examined by other artists like George Orwell. On the micro-scale of a high school student council, though, it works fine -- and it's also a thoughtful examination of what it actually does take to overcome apathy. A couple of years after this film's release, Montreal was filled with students in the "Maple Spring", one of the country's biggest protest movements. I have no idea whether the film played a role in this, but I'm certain that tens of thousands of young people went through the same struggles as Tony, Caroline, Sarah, and Skip, when they decided to pick up a banner and hit the streets -- and that's true whether they're in Cairo, Athens, or Washington DC.