Still Hanging At Eleven: "Voting is the opium of the masses in this country. Every four years you deaden the pain."

This morning has been a little doomy and gloomy because I was reading the Wall Street Journal online and then a column over at Yahoo!Fianace
(http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/richricher/69637). This whole business of economic yaya in a voting year made me think of another film that ties for the eleven spot - REDS.

I know. I know. Again with the journalists! But this one has has history, tragic romance and exotic foreign travel during wartime. It is also one of the most beautifully written, heartfelt and fantastically acted films I've ever seen.

This film is thick with the romanticism of thinking you can make a difference in an impossible situation (Russia at the beginning of the last century)and ride out an ill-fated romance (Jack Reed and Louise Bryant) no matter what at the beginning. As things devolve, all the characters sink along with their ideals.

It's Diane Keaton's face in the picture above - as she looks out of the train she's taken to see Russia's real internal struggles - that says she knows she's gone too far but there's no going back now.

REDS seems so timely now because it's also about the passion for political change that will really help people. The movie calls into question whether Americans are really capable of making real forward progress in their politics in one clever, clever line -

Emma Goldman: Voting is the opium of the masses in this country. Every four years you deaden the pain.


I'm hoping we do much more than deaden the pain this coming November.