I think for many people used to the pace and mood of most western, especially blockbusters and action flicks, it feels very slow and doesn't fulfill their action-packed expectations of what a movie about revolution should be. Like it's not portrayed as sexy.

Totally agree that they are both very good.

La Commune! How could I forget. Thank you that used to be on my list but I forgot about it. Is Unstoppable the Denzel flick?

It's both.

It's a (literal) revolutionary piece taking the nascent genre and adding leftist revolutionary characteristics. I don't want to spoil the whole thing but even the ending is like :lenin-rage: himself telling you to do some praxis.

A wholesome story of a crushing defeat, unfortunately. Still a great display of solidarity.

Oh and

The Young Karl Marx [Germany/Belgium, 2017; 1h 58m]

Biographical drama based on Karl Marx's major life events until the writing of the Communist Manifesto.

The English title is Burn!, and I think it's fantastic. :parenti: talks about it, about a film that actually discusses how and why imperialism works. He draws a distinction between it and Ghandi, as the latter never acknowledges why the Brits were occupying India in the first place.

Riff Raff is a personal favourite as it was the first one of his I saw in the cinema. Carla's Song also. And Sweet Sixteen because I knew folk like that growing up in Scotland.

They are all worthwhile though - covering different themes and social situations - just depends where your interests lie - a more international bent or personal snapshots of family life.

But as I said, his films can sometimes be brutal and can stay with you for a long time, for good or ill.

It holds up, I'm amazed it even got the accolades in the western press because it's about Guevara.

Agree. On one hand I was plesantly surprised that a mainstream american movie didnt hide Hampton's communism (even maoism is mentioned no?) but on the other I was unpleasantly not suprised that it didn't give a really marxist understanding of the function of the deep state as an agent of capitalism.

It has its flaws. I know that Hy Thurman has complained that the scenes with the Young Patriots weren't accurate.

Yh tbh I don't normally have much of an issue with Lynch's (or anyone else's) interest in Buddhism, including Tibetan Buddhism. The main exception is white, bougie, hippie westerners new age appropriation of it, especially in the culture of modern corporate capitalism where you get it recycled as corporate management techniques (Gautama must be turning in his mandala). Lynch is obviously quite a bit in this tradition of white westerners being influenced by new age interpretations of east asian spirtuality, but I think he uses it in interesting ways. I'm also not absolutely against people using techniques from other traditions that can help them psychologically. If people wanna usefully incorporate buddhism meditation practices for their own well-being then I'm not going to be a cold piece of shit on them like a holier-than-thou moralist. I'm not about to just write-off the entirety of a thousand year philosophical tradition or how it can be used in modern words of art. Also, the metaphysics in Lynch's universe is closer to some more materialistic types of buddhism, or even just straight up Lovecraftian.

If Lynch a mystic and prob a lib? Like abstractly yh I guess it definitely seems so on paper. I also think he's just so ideologically weird that applying those terms to him can be very misleading. Like I can't imagine any other lib making films like Eraserhead, Fire Walk with Me or Elephantman.

But the one of the central themes throughout his work, which is normally not highlighted enough in pop-culture, is male violence on women, the violence-inducing delusions of the male gaze and womens' consequent trauma. The weird metaphysics are him making concrete the traumatic dream-logic of the traumatized inner psyches of his characters. As they put in the show, it's about the almost incomprehensible depravity of the evil that men do . Watching Twin Peaks and coming away from it with 'it's about a quirky detective who likes donuts, black coffee and tibetan buddhism' is really not giving it due credit imo. More generally I think it says something about liberal culture's media illiteracy.

I think Lynch does in fact buy into his own metaphysic. Which I don't mind, tbh, it's some mindbending stuff, and I think it's pretty weird to write off without reflection a work of art because the metaphysics of the creator don't conform to my materialist beliefs, even if I'm going to likely be favorable to works which do to some degree, even though there's plenty of materialist works which are just terrible art) but whether you buy it or not, it can still be a deeply beautiful way to explore and express the ideas he wants to express, and a principal function in the series is to allow him to develop a concrete story (although, yh, the linearity of the whole thing and the 'common sense' idea of a narrative breaks down) about the psychological traumas of women, above all, but not only, Laura.

Also, I don't know how much you've watched of it, but as the series progresses, especially once you get to Fire, Walk with Me and season 3 (honestly one of my favorite works in anything ever) the idea that Cooper is just this goofy, heroic, labrador-like human being is really deconstructed. Cooper is not portrayed as innocent of the male gaze and fetishization of the women around him, including Laura. Also checks out when you consider Audrey's character progression.

Also, are people really not allowed to engage in rounded character developments of character's we should, ofc, problematize politically because of their reactionary actions? I'm not suddenly not interested in anyone's reflections, pov or character because I can place them in a relatively non-progressive or regressive political or social position. Those points of view can also be important for reflecting about the issues and ideas being explored. I can still lose my breath or get a rush seeing some renaissance painting or greek sculpture or taoist chinese poetry or islamic calligraphy despite not being Christian, a polytheist, a taoist or a Muslim.

On the tibetan politics point, the incorporation of it into the PRC was imo definitely historically progressive given that Tibet was in effect a theocratic, feudal society whose serfs' condition in practice frequently amounted to slavery, so yh his championing of the tibetan people is obvs a classic 90s lib take on the issue, but let's also not pretend like every time actually existing socialist states have intervened that it hasn't been problematic in many respects, even if it was progressive from a historically materialist perspective.

I agree it's a bit gratuitous that I put both lists but I think each has some films not on the other list.

I'm not sure if Lanthimos is explictly left wing but The Favourite was kinda left by default for me because every aristocrat is scum.

Yh I also need to check the Changjin sequel. First one slapped. It was amazing seeing the yankies as villainous as they portray every other group of (non hwhite) people.

Yh I will admit that the second half of season 2 for Twin Peaks gets a bit rough at points. The reason is that apparently Lynch had stepped away for a while from actively directing and writing, so the minor screenwriters took over and it became a bit more like an actual silly soap. If you really want to be a purist and watch it all I recommend interpreting everything it the middle of seaosn 2 as a goofy fever dream where everything suddently seems more innocent before it descends into horror again.

Honestly you can just check the plot for the rest of the season 2 episodes after the big mid season reveal resolution in episode 10, except for the final two episodes. The final two episodes are fantastic though. The final one is honestly one of favorite episodes of anything ever. It can be still good to watch it all to catch everything in the film and season 3.

Oh yeah, Miyazaki was a union leader and nearly all of his movies have some combination of pro-environmentalist, anti-fascist, anti-capitaism, and pro-feminist themes. Obvi these are toned down in the movies explicitly aimed at kids but Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, Porco Rosso, and The Wind Rises are all classics and are more explicit about the above themes

For real?

Yeah, Miyazaki is a radlib who is heavily environmentalist and borderline anti-industrial.

However, the founding of Studio Ghibli and the production/writing of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (literally 1984) is the period when he claims to have turned his back on Marxism and realized "there are good people among [the bourgeoisie]/the workers can be reactionary too" (which, it might sound silly, is the reason why I refuse to watch it)

He hasn't really moved much to the right since then, but isn't exactly vocal about his views either.

At the core of what Miyazaki is, is a doomer imo.