Perhaps you're like me. You'd just seen Reds and you want to wash the hopelessness out with some - any - evidence that there is a historical and moral conscience somewhere in the film industry with regard to Stalinism and Soviet Communism. You come across a little-known Australian production called Children of the Revolution which bills itself as a satire of the the western true-believers valorized in Reds; a comedy about a 'useful idiot' so starstruck by Uncle Joe, she flocks to Stalin as a groupie would and ends up pregnant and raising his love child.
Now, I, and I'm sure anyone, could imagine about a dozen ways this premise could be developed into a narrative coherent enough to be both cutting and entertaining. What instead ends up on screen is ... hard to explain. It seems like a pre-freshman effort, as if there were some producers with some money to make some movie and they selected the writer-director by opening the window and shouting down to the street, "Hey you! You wanna write and direct a feature film production?" and someone at the bus stop shouted back up, "Sure! I've seen at least a dozen movies!"
The movie starts out with the stated premise as a satire, but not very strongly. Then it changes form a half-dozen times as it slogs toward it's conclusion, becoming a romance, then a thriller, then a drama, then a tragedy then a thriller again and so forth. One thing follows the other in sequence only. Characters who have no natural reason to be in the same room with one another develop personal connections and weep together. There's a "race against the clock" thing in there which comes from nowhere and resolves to no consequence.
If there's some significant historical event connecting Australia to the Cold War, Children of the Revolution fails to make note of it. The movie is nonetheless set entirely in Australia and has an A-list cast of Australian actors. Taking this into consideration, an explanation for this cinematic abomination reveals itself. Children of the Revolution is the product of public grant money. The actors are fulfilling an obligation to whatever the Australian version of SAG is. We may assume that there was at some point a contest put on by the Australian Film Council, or something like that, and the 'auteur' who wrote and directed this thing was awarded a production grant and given carte blanc to make some kind of movie on the strength of his submission of a ten-minute short.
Now, I, and I'm sure anyone, could imagine about a dozen ways this premise could be developed into a narrative coherent enough to be both cutting and entertaining. What instead ends up on screen is ... hard to explain. It seems like a pre-freshman effort, as if there were some producers with some money to make some movie and they selected the writer-director by opening the window and shouting down to the street, "Hey you! You wanna write and direct a feature film production?" and someone at the bus stop shouted back up, "Sure! I've seen at least a dozen movies!"
The movie starts out with the stated premise as a satire, but not very strongly. Then it changes form a half-dozen times as it slogs toward it's conclusion, becoming a romance, then a thriller, then a drama, then a tragedy then a thriller again and so forth. One thing follows the other in sequence only. Characters who have no natural reason to be in the same room with one another develop personal connections and weep together. There's a "race against the clock" thing in there which comes from nowhere and resolves to no consequence.
If there's some significant historical event connecting Australia to the Cold War, Children of the Revolution fails to make note of it. The movie is nonetheless set entirely in Australia and has an A-list cast of Australian actors. Taking this into consideration, an explanation for this cinematic abomination reveals itself. Children of the Revolution is the product of public grant money. The actors are fulfilling an obligation to whatever the Australian version of SAG is. We may assume that there was at some point a contest put on by the Australian Film Council, or something like that, and the 'auteur' who wrote and directed this thing was awarded a production grant and given carte blanc to make some kind of movie on the strength of his submission of a ten-minute short.