Revolution

"Revolution" could have been a fascinating story. Unfortunately, it seems that director Hugh Hudson had shot his entire wad when he made the Oscar-winning "Chariots of Fire". Both "Greystoke" and this film were sloppy, choppy messes with no narrative flow. It is confounding, because it is obvious that there was a lot of attention to detail in parts of "Revolution". But only in parts. There is as much here that simply doesn't fit--the most glaring example being Al Pacino performance as a colonial trapper. He apparently forgot what movie he was in, and frequently uses a halting accent very similar to the one he used only two years earlier in Brian DePalma's "Scarface". And I don't think his character was supposed to be Cuban. The rest of the film produces the same effect you would get from flipping through a beautiful set of American Revolution postcards--at random.

As a high school US History teacher I often use a few scenes from this film in my classes. I have found value in some elements of this dark, brooding, and sluggish film and think it deserves some credit. Examples are: NY City in the opening and closing scenes, (they are our history books brought to life). The battles of NY, specifically Long Island and Brooklyn Heights (the film is vague as to which exact battle this is) the complicated world of Nastasia Kinski's character Daisy, daughter of loyalists, mother yes, but which side is her father really on? Additionally, the miserable conditions at Valley Forge, and very importantly, Tom and Ned "quitting" the war after their first battle (Historically Washington's "grand army" melted away by the autumn of 1776). As a teacher I love the resource of this film. As a parent I want my children to be exposed, As a period movie fan I don't love this film very much.

Many of the bad reviews of Revolution point out that it is dirty, filthy, disgusting, muddy, messy and uncomfortable to watch. True, true, true.

But... THAT'S WAR!

As a child I thought the American Revolution was the cleanest and most honerable war in history, fought by idyllic patriots on the side of freedom against snooty, smug king-lovers. That's how it was depicted in my childhood history books. But as I got older I realized that the books must have been glossing over something, because it seemed utterly illogical that a war could be so clean and honerable. Wars are desperate and horrible blood-soaked experiences that rip relationships apart, destroy everything, and are fought at ground level by the most uneducated people of all, many of whom really have no choice in the matter and are merely fighting for their own lives.

Revolution demythologizes the American Revolution by dismissing many of the ideal illusions we have about that war in particular. The hero is a self-serving man, who has no interest at all in war, but is forced to fight in it against his will. He's a free man who is forced into virtual slavery to fight for his freedom. Does this make him a bad man? No, he's an honest man who is out for number one, and is motivated mostly by love and loyalty to his son. The war steals everything from him, so why should he be happy about it? There are a few true 'patriots' in this movie, gung-ho idealists like Daisy, but almost everyone else is in the war for selfish motives, to profit from the war, to assert power, to avoid starvation, or for the pure joy of war itself. The redcoats are depicted as rowdy london street-toughs, who are no more or less ignorant & petty than the Americans, only more cocky and egotistical. Their uniforms are ill fitting and poorly miantained. This and a thousand other details give this movie the air of truth. By the end the victory of America is all the more sweet due to the wretchedness the victors must slog through. It's a very noble thing to see war depicted in such realistic ways.

This movie might be too grim to take if not for the great love story at the center of it. Its an entirely unique love story in the history of film, because it demonstrates how a relationship can continue to grow over time even if the lovers are separated from each other for long periods. Daisy and Tom have only a few minutes worth of conversations in the entire movie, and those represent ALL of their conversations. Basically they cross paths from time to time, but they are interrupted every time, and must leave each other, unsure when or if they will ever see each other again. So although they don't really get to know each other or go on dates or have any kind of normal courtship, they nonetheless fall in love, basically thinking about each other over the intervening periods. It is really the war that allows them to fall in love in the first place. Without the war these two people from opposite sides of the social spectrum would never have socialized, and without American freedom they would never have been able to stay together. But in the throes of war all the social rules are off, and these two are so desperate for something good to enter their lives, they fall in love. I don't know why this touched me so much, but it did.

I find this movie emminently re-watchable. I love it. In comparison, Mel Gibson's bad rip-off "the Patriot" is unwatchable to me. It is so full of moral absolutes and is so organized and visually beautiful, I think it does a disservice to the reality of war.

But that's my taste. I love almost every grim-reality war movie. Catch 22, The Victors & Das Boot, to name a few.

I've just seen "Revolution" on TV and I have to say that it's a much better movie than one may think. Sometimes a movie is worth-seeing only because of its wonderful production values. And "Revolution" is an eye-popping visual feat: wonderful cinematography, first-rate period details. I might say that beside Stanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon" and Tony Richardson's "Tom Jones", this is the most beautifully made period movie about the eighteenth century. "Revolution" is also an important film because there are only about a dozen films on the Revolutionary War and almost all of them are a matter of obscurity - at least for a Hungarian movie lover. The most popular is Roland Emmerich's "The Patriot" (2000). In my opinion that's a much worse film than Hudson's maligned film. When "Revolution" was released it was a critical and commercial disaster. I think it didn't fit in any of the movie trends of the 1980s. But in the future it might be regarded as a flawed but valuable movie. Its flaws are obvious and much-discussed so I don't want to speak about them. If you're interested in beautiful period pieces and the Revolutionary War you might like this movie.

Searching for some short-length used videotapes, I found the laserdisc version of "Revolution," which I'd never seen. This non-letterbox, TV format version had the usual "talking to air" problem with 2.35:1 movies. Although a scratch and miscellaneous dirt made the picture skip/repeat/wobble, it was an interesting foxhole-level look at the American Revolution. The scenery, set design, costumes, and varied kinds of people made me think that this was Sergio Leone's take on The War for Independence. Was Al Pacino believable as a backwoods English colonist? No, but like a scratch running through a film, the "speech impediment" is overlooked as the tale unfolds. This film, unlike "The Patriot," shows camp followers, Indians on both sides, fighting women, "Not Worth a Continental" issues, lots of dirt and the conventions and results of 18th century warfare. Valley Forge isn't as grim an encampment as paintings and written records reported, but it's a close miss for the English countryside location. Are the characters believable? Hard to tell, since their histories and motives aren't complete. (Having the action jump place to place with jumps in time make this a "fill-in-the-missing-backstory" exercise found in James Clavell's book "Nobel House" series.) Is it an interesting movie? Definitely, and has that 18th century "fleas, dirt, and grease" look that is missing from "The Patriot." 7/10, for presenting issues and motives that turned English colonists into Americans.