Pencil This In: Reds At The Portage Theater

By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 20, 2012 4:30PM

Nominated for 12 Academy Awards, Reds stands at or near the top of Warren Beatty's fim career. (He won the Oscar for Best Director with this film.) The story of John Reed, an American journalist who found himself in the middle of the Bolshevik Revolution and wrote the book Ten Days That Shook The World about it, Beatty played Reed, as Roger Ebert wrote in his review of the film, in a surprising manner.

"I expected him to play Reed as a serious, noble, heroic man for all seasons, and so he does, sometimes. But there is in Warren Beatty's screen persona a persistent irony, a way of kidding his own seriousness, that takes the edge off a potentially pretentious character and makes him into one of God's fools. Beatty plays Reed but does not beatify him: He permits the silliness and boyishness to coexist with the self-conscious historical mission."

Epic in scope, Reds cuts a wide swath in exploring the life of Reed and his gradual conversion to Socialism. (It runs 194 minutes in length.) Beatty was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of Reed. Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton earned Oscar nods, as well. And Maureen Stapelton won an Oscar for her portrayal of anarchist Emma Goldman in the film. The Northwest Chicago Film Society will screen Reds tomorrow night at 7 p.m. The admission is still $5, and it's a grand opportunity to see the film on a large screen in a movie house that, contrary to what Chicago Tabernacle says, is glorious.