cndiver

This is a film for those who love democracy -- the victory of what Jefferson called the "aristocracy of talent" over the dead weight of the past. You will be swept up in this marvelous adventure, this heroic tale that recounts the American and the French revolutions at their best. This film is the LIFE, not the letter -- as it is presented in text books. Hurray for the American revolution and the French revolution and remember that their goal was wit and delight and love -- not advancement as an end in itself. The French cinema has presented this film in such a lovely, believable, natural manner. Thank you to them. Wonderful, humane acting graces a noble subject.

Most of us come from families who came from the old country with practically nothing. Naturally, our grandparents worked from dawn to dusk to survive in the new land and make a better life for the kids. It was the generations that followed that caught the American disease of wanting to become a "somebody" as a substitute for the integrity of the Old World that was left behind. The paradox of this film, the paradox of achieving "the American Dream", of "building this great nation" is that after all the generations of struggle for position, money, and importance, we wake up and realize that it's all empty, that simple integrity and friendship are all that mean anything, that our fore-fathers had that in the beginning.

It has been said that in order to save one's life one must loose it....

this long, dull string of clichés about revolution and counter-revolution, with its "magical realism" style -- given the excellent films you both have to your credit ? When I saw the two of you listed as having major parts I assumed that this film would have the brilliance and terror of, say, "Darkness at Noon". I respected your judgment....

For those of you who were impressed by this film, may I suggest that you read volume one of Alexander Solzenitzen's "GULAG Archapelligo" ? Although the content is bracing, Solzenitzen has a wonderful, droll sense of humor that tellingly mocks the State's authority over our hearts and minds. Or consider "Life Inside", Mindy Lewis' remarkable autobiography about how her controlling mother absurdly had her committed to a mental institution because Mindy was too alive to fit the mold.

These two books deal with the issues that the film Land of the Blind deals with but they are telling, pithy, and substantial.