gaijin88

My interest in this movie was due to the negative reaction that it received when it was first released. In the interest of full disclosure, I am not in favor of compulsory union membership. I strongly believe that union membership should be entirely voluntary, and members should be able to keep the union from using their dues for political causes that the members do not support. That being said, I found this movie very entertaining and inspiring. These were people whose entire lives were dependent on the mine and their ability to earn a decent wage. They were totally invested in the union and had to live with the consequences, good or bad, of their actions. The women were as invested in the mine and the union as were their husbands, even though they were not actually employed by the mine or members of the union. The actions of these women were truly inspiring. But I did notice three areas which I think make the union portrayed in this movie completely different from today's unions: 1. The union leaders put up with the same hardships as the rank and file. Their jobs were on the line and they also suffered from not being paid, and were just as dependent on the donations from others outside of their union. 2. The union members (and eventually the wives as well) were free to vote their consciences with respect to all actions proposed by the union. There did not appear to be anyone who was trying to bully or unduly influence the other members to vote a particular way. 3. There were no politicians (local or from Washington) involved in the strike. There were no congressional hearings or big union bosses trying to influence the strike. Other than the donations of food and other necessities from other sympathetic unions, the mine workers were on their own.

When I first saw this show, I thought it was marginally funny, but very PC. Then one morning before work I caught an episode that tried to depict Joseph Stalin and his crimes in a humorous light. How do you make light of someone who sent millions to their deaths in the Gulag? Of course, they would never try the same thing with Hitler, but it's OK if it's a communist murderer. What's next, cartoons about Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Kim Il Sung/Kim Jong Il, etc.? The people who wrote this episode are probably the same idiots who are now going around wearing Che Guevara t-shirts without even knowing or caring about Guevara's crimes.

I finally obtained a video copy of this movie, and it lived up to all of my expectations. Tom Courtenay is easily believable as Ivan, and the early scene where he devours a cold and non-nourishing breakfast is a hard-hitting portrayal of what the life of a Gulag prisoner was reduced to. A horrific scene at the end of the movie (though not in the book) showing the Captain beginning his first night of ten in the punishment cells is representative of Solzhenitsyn's observation in "The Gulag Archipelago": The Soviet Union had its death camps too; it (as opposed to the Nazis) just didn't use gas.