Customer Reviews

Reed: Insurgent Mexico [VHS]

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"Reed, Mexico Insurgent" is a fictionalized account of John Reed's reporting amidst the chaos of the Mexican revolution. This truly extraordinary film shows and proves Reed's own driving assertion that there can be no such thing as objective journalism. With gritty realism the director Paul Leduc shows us the dirty faces of the peasant troops through Reed's own eyes, as he comes to terms with his role as an "observer" of a revolution he believes very strongly in. We follow Reed from regiment to regiment edging ever closer to the frontlines in his search for journalistic truth. Regretting his "cowardice" in not taking up arms himself, Reed, with the help of friends, comes to the realization that the most powerful weapon he can contribute to the cause of the revolution, is the relentless pursuit of truth in his writing. Reed would later go on to apply this lesson in his "10 Days That Shook the World" on the Russian Revolution. Leduc spares us none of the unpleasantries in his from the trenches view of the generals and charros that filled the ranks of Villa's revolutionary army. Dirty, petty and sometimes egotistical, these soldiers are also passionate in their fight for freedom and land. They are not always able to express themselves clearly, but Leduc's simple, unrhetorical camera work shows us why they are fighting. This film is earnest, honest, and quite moving and many of its images tend to linger in the mind. The slow, labored progress of a wagon wheel representing the peasants own journey; the dusty desolation of a churchyard cemetary after the chaos of battle; an errant box of dynamite falling off of a wagon but not breaking. True to history and an aesthetic of justice and liberty, Leduc's film makes us understand the power of passionate journalism to change the world for the better.