Daniel

Excellent, fictionalized account of the Rosenberg story. Looked at from all perspectives from the early 1950's to the late 60's. We come away not caring if they did it or not! Lindsay Crouse stands out in her role as Rochelle. Mandy Patinkin is excellent. as always. They seem to steal the show from Hutton. The Paul Robeson (Monitor label) recordings also add to the picture's stunning realism. This is certainly one of the better movies of the early 1980's. The E.L. Doctorow screenplay is better than the novel, "The Book of Daniel" which I thought was rather strange. If I hadn't seen the movie first, I would have been lost just reading the book.

In 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were tried and convicted of conspiring to deliver atomic secrets to Russia during the 40s (when the U.S. and Russia were wartime allies). The trial took place in an atmosphere of anti-Communist hysteria.

Prior to their arrest, the following events took place: State Department official Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury, Senator Joseph McCarthy launched a campaign to rid the State Department of "subversives", British physicist Klaus Fuchs was convicted of spying for the Russians, Russia exploded an atomic bomb, and the Korean War broke out.

The chief prosecution witnesses were chemist Harry Gold who admitted he had never seen or known either Rosenberg, and Ethel's brother David Greenglass, a machinist working on the Manhattan project in Los Alamos, who provided the jury with details of the Rosenberg's involvement in espionage. Ethel's guilt was based solely on Greenglass' testimony that she had typed up classified secrets (this account was later acknowledged by Greenglass to be false).

In 1953, Julius and Ethel were executed after numerous appeals for clemency had been rejected. The executions caused deep divisions among the American people and the Rosenbergs were the last Americans to be executed for sabotage. Fifty years later, we are still trying to come to terms with the case.

Daniel, a 1983 film based on the novel "The Book of Daniel" by E.L. Doctorow, is a fictional account of the trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (called Paul and Rochelle Isaacson in the movie) focusing on how these events affected their children. Turning in a strong performance, Timothy Hutton plays their son Daniel, who is searching for the truth about his parent's guilt or innocence. Amanda Plummer is his sister Susan (in reality, the Rosenbergs had two sons Robert and Michael) who suffers a mental breakdown as a result of the execution, and Ed Asner portrays the Isaacson's lawyer who did his best for the parents, who are shown as self-righteous and uncooperative.

The movie unfolds in numerous flashbacks delineated by color filters (blue for current, orange for past). Lumet shows the Isaacsons (Mandy Patinkin and Lindsay Crouse) participation in protest movements and Communist Party activities and depicts their arrest, confinement, trial, and execution. The film does not make any statement as to their guilt or innocence. However, in an emotional scene with their accuser's sister, Daniel speculates that Rochelle's brother Selig Mindish (Joseph Leon) fingered the Isaacsons to protect other Party members.

Most of the film centers on the parent's relationship with the children. While showing how much the parents loved them, it also makes clear that their dedication to political causes transcended everything else in their lives (they could have been freed if they named names but their politics dictated that they would not cooperate with the FBI).

Daniel successfully captures the hysteria of the period and the suffering of the children who were shunted between overburdened relatives, children's shelters, and foster parents. In one of the most moving scenes in the film, Daniel and Susan run away from the shelter to walk the streets of New York looking for their old home, while in the background Paul Robeson sings, "This Little Light of Mine".

Though Daniel is a powerful and moving drama, the film is flawed by Patinkin's over-the-top performance, fake Jewish accents, and confusing jumps between different time periods. I also thought Susan's character was created solely to manipulate the emotions. Is Daniel is a great film? No, I don't think it is, but I do love it for its passion and for the courage it shows in bringing to life a difficult and troubling episode in American history.

In filming E.L. Doctorow's fictionalized account of the Rosenberg case and its implications for the children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Sidney Lumet brought a good vision to the finished product. Lumet grew up in those times and had I'm sure peripheral associations with the kind of people that would have gone the same way as Julius and Ethel or in the case of the film and novel, Paul and Rochelle Isaacson. Lumet's love of New York also helps a lot in this film.

The fictionalized Rosenbergs are played by Mandy Patinkin and Lindsay Crouse. We get the idealism of the Rosenbergs, the history of persecution they felt, the empathy for other minorities. It should never be forgotten that it was Communists for their own reasons, but still were the first ones to take up black civil rights as a group cause. Radical politics and all, Patinkin and Crouse give their children a fine set of universal values to live by.

The real Rosenberg sons were adopted by another couple and to this day still try and claim a good legacy for their parents. In the film the title role of Daniel is played by Timothy Hutton and his sister is played by Ellen Barkin. Years after the executions of their parents they have continued the radical traditions of the parents, but they're into the protest politics of the sixties, involved in a mass movement the parents only dreamed about, but hardly under the auspices of the Communist Party USA.

Barkin is caught up in the moment, but Hutton wants to clear his parent's names. In real life it was Ethel Rosenberg's brother David Greenglass who fingered both of them as Communist spies. Greenglass was assigned as a sergeant to Los Alamos and purportedly did the actual stealing of the atomic bomb design. In other words for the kids it was a beloved uncle.

They should have kept that part of the story, but I'm willing to bet that E.L. Doctorow did not want to be sued by David Greenglass who is still alive now, so a family friend and hanger-on with the Communists played by Joseph Leon is the informer.

The highlight of the film is the confrontation scene with Hutton and Tovah Feldshuh playing the daughter of Joseph Leon. The growing up experiences of both are laid out naked and bare, the acting is some of the best both these players have ever done.

In real life Julius Rosenberg was guilty of being a ringleader of a nest of Communist spies. Ethel Rosenberg's guilt is far more problematic, the closest you could come to here is Mrs. Mary Surratt who ran the boardinghouse where Booth and his fellow conspirators met in the Lincoln assassination plot. Her son was part of the ring, but he fled the country so the country in the ill tempered mood it was in, countenanced the hanging of the mother instead. Ethel was probably supportive of her husband's activities as a dutiful wife and nothing more.

What is also clear is that the US government threw out the rulebook when it came to due process in the prosecution of the case. It was the times, you had to have been there.

Although it's not the real story, no more than Billy Bathgate was about Dutch Schultz, E.L. Doctorow and Sidney Lumet weave a very fine tale about some troubled times.

After his worried sister suffers a nervous breakdown, a graduate student tries to investigate whether his parents were really guilty of being Soviet spies in this solemn drama from Sidney Lumet. The film is loosely based on an actual married couple who were executed in the 1950s with their young children forced to grow up without them. The film shares some striking similarities with Lumet's latter 'Running on Empty' as it spins a tale of two youths trying to live their own lives separate from their parents' political actions. Not nearly as well-known or acclaimed, 'Daniel' is beset by an unhelpful, overly complex narrative structure that jumps randomly between time periods. Some of the supporting performances are also overwrought. The film does well though depicting Daniel and his sister's difficulties as children removed from their parents. The harsh times they experience in a state run institution are especially potent and the bond between the pair is heartfelt. Timothy Hutton is also perfectly cast in a passionate performance as the adult title character and his on/off narration of how the electric chair works is effectively eerie. Speaking of which, the eventual execution scenes are handled very well. On one hand, 'Daniel' is a bit of a mess with its time period leaps and inconsistent performances, but its portrait of a young man haunted by his parents' fate truly resonates.

Daniel is one of Sidney Lumet's favourites of his own films. He cites it even before Dog Day Afternoon, Network and 12 Angry Men. I guess when a film isn't as assimilated into pop culture as they are you can keep it closer to your heart. It's a shame, the film deserves so much more attention. This is no half hearted venture. It's emotionally charged and meticulous in all its details. From the textured cinematography (great use of colour changes for past and present), slick editing and rousing performances, you can feel the heat of the passion poured into it. And it hits some real movie magic moments, especially with Mandy Patinkin. Perhaps the problem is that it lacks a real hook to real you in. Its purpose is clear, the activism is justified, but it feels quite specific to its two time periods and struggles to resonate the same way now. It's a film that really needed to strike its chord when it was released. But that doesn't hold it back from being a deeply poignant experience, the highlight being Timothy Hutton's powerful performance as the titular protagonist.

8/10