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CRADLE WILL ROCK
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CRADLE WILL ROCK is Tim Robbins' Altman-meets-ER staging of a production aborted in 1937 because funding for the Federal Theater Project (FTP) was cut 20% after allegations of Communist infiltration and propaganda.
Robbins clearly admires Altman's approach -- the movie has a stellar cast of at least twelve great actors, most of whom are allowed free rein. (See if you can pick out Cary Elwes -- of THE PRINCESS BRIDE -- who has either gone to seed or will do anything for a part.) The camera swoops and dives in a manner reminiscent of THE PLAYER (Altman movie *starring* Tim Robbins, probably where he learned the tricks). The FTP sponsors a production of CRADLE WILL ROCK, a piece of Socialist propaganda (let's be honest here) written by Hank Azaria's playwright Marc Blitzstein. After the usual theatrical-in- development sequences (auditions, set problems, dramatized crew fights and affairs), the play moves toward opening night ...
... while meanwhile, a pinched and disgruntled benefits clerk (Joan Cusack, taking another one for the team) and a washed-up vaudevillian ventriloquist (Bill Murray, who has clearly found *his* niche in film), want to report on all the Communist sympathizing and propaganda infesting the theater.
Well, you can spool out the plot from that. Unfortunately, Robbins' political sensitivities become too obvious. Through the lens of history he has decided that everyone in 1936 could see the Nazis and Italian Fascists were going to be trouble, and he conveniently forgets what Uncle Joe Stalin was up to. Conversely, he ignores completely the fact that many of these theater folk *were* in the American Communist Party, because they believed that democracy was past its sell-by date and the world was going to be either Fascist or Communist. (Joe McCarthy's evil genius was, in 1948, to conflate having been in the American Communist Party in the 1930's with being a traitor to America; Robins makes the reverse mistake, expunging any suggestion of CP membership because he knows the actors were patriotic Americans.)
It all culminates in a scene which is great theater (in two senses of the word) but terrible polemics (and reveals that the play CRADLE WILL ROCK was ghastly), in which director Robbins sledgehammers away any pretense of objectivity. But then the film ends.
The cast is generally outstanding. Emily Watson is luminous, Vanessa Redgrave gleefully steals every scene she is in, and Angus MacFayden (Robert the Bruce from BRAVEHEART) does a marvelously over-the-top rendition of young Orson Welles. Indeed, the historical-roman-a-clef quality is a delight in itself, with appearances by Nelson Rockefeller, W H Hearst and his bit of arm candy Marion Davies, John Housman ("we make money the old fashioned way -- we *earn* it", see how he makes money in this movie), and Diego Rivera (and Freda Kahlo).
In short, treat it like a better directed, wittier Oliver Stone. Check your politics at the door, tolerate the few slow didactic lefties-weren't-pinkos defenses, and enjoy the show.