Children of the Revolution

"Children of The Revolution" is one of those well-executed dark comedies, that the Australian Film Industry excels at. If one enjoys dark comedy with a heady twinge of surrealism, you're really going to enjoy this movie. Our best scene (without spoiling it) is when the three start dancing and handing out flowers, with Louis Armstrong crooning Cole Porter's "You're The Top" in the background. My friends almost fell off the couch with laughter. It's a gem!

I'm heartened to see that several other critics in this column were apparently as confused as I was by this movie. The individual gags are quite funny, but overall, what is this movie about? Is it a comedy? Certainly that's part of it, but is that all? Is it an anti-communist film that relies on comedy to make its point? Well, it might be, but if so, then I think it fails. Or does it have no overall statement to make at all? A bit difficult to believe, given some of the plot lines.

One unsettling attribute of this movie is that it presents itself as if it were based on a true story. Judy Davis plays a Socialist who allegedly had an affair with Josef Stalin (F. Murray Abraham), and when she gives birth to a son with all the revolutionary's traits, there is some dispute about whether he is who everyone thinks he is. During the film he gets into all sorts of trouble with the law and eventually falls in love with a cop that frequently arrests him (Rachel Griffiths). Only at the end does the whim tone down to a serious drama. Whatever this movie has to say, it kept my attention all the way through.

As a son who grew up in a family of communists, I found this movie very insightful: the twists and turns of what fervent idealists took to be worker's paradise through the 50s, 60s, 70s and then to the end of the dream in the late 80s/early 90s was very well portrayed, especially with Judy Davis' stalwart commitment, which was portrayed quite sympathetically; the dark side of her family relationships was also poignantly sketched, as were her son's struggles with history: both global and personal; all in all, a superb blend of the comic and the dramatic: a genre it's very easy to screw up and is rarely, if ever, handled as deftly as it was here.

This film is about a woman obsessed with Communism, and her life after bearing Stalin's child.

The film is meant to be a comedy, and it should be viewed as so. Forget the political backdrop of it, and you will find it quite amusing. I find Judy Davis' performance as the obsessed woman very magnetic. She has this dedicated enthusiasm towards Communism, and she portrays it so well. Her despair towards the end of the film, when Communism experiences downfall, is also depicted well. Though it is a comedy, I find the pace rather slow, which is more like a drama. Overall, I think it is an intelligent comedy, much better than the average toilet joke films.