Word: offing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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The heart of the movie is a dramatization of the real-life events behind the renegade production of the 1936 musical play "The Cradle Will Rock," a Brechtian compilation of songs that depicts the workers of Steeltown, USA standing up the Man. Robbins treats the show as an important cultural...
But there's much more to the film's story than this one defining event. The movie's opening shot follows the homeless Olive Stanton (Emily Watson) down the streets of New York, then tracks the steps of a nervous, buttoned-down worker (Joan Cusack) tacking up posters for a...
So we are also treated to the story of Hallie Flanagan (Cherry Jones), the passionate director of the Federal Theater, who is called in to testify in front of a Congressional committee which labeled Euripedes and Christopher Marlowe as Communists. (Most of the great, crackling dialogue in these scenes is...
Told alongside all of this energetic hoopla is the story of Nelson Rockefeller (John Cusack) and his patronage of the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera (Ruben Blades), providing another example of the complex problems that can result when artistic statement is bound to a controlling force. Young Rockefeller didn't count...
Robbins' history lesson never feels spoon-fed, delivered with a snappy pace and comedy that is by turns broadly slapstick and subtly incisive. Nimble performances keep this complicated creation afloat. Though the film's scope makes all of its portrayals into caricatures, the actors seem aware of the limitations of...