I saw this movie as a young girl and loved it. It is one of the reasons I am a republican, especially the end of the movie and what happened to their daughter. I never wanted that for myself. Sadly we are headed that way.
It was interesting. As a kid, there were only three things I remember from that movie: the students getting shot in the field of tall grass trying to fight, and that the movie was too long.
And, of course, “Lara’s Theme”. (My mom hummed it a lot, as I recall...:)
For years, when I thought of movies that were too long for no reason, I always thought of that one. After all, “The Ten Commandments” was long, but it had meaning to me.
When I saw the movie recently, I wished it had been even longer, it appealed to me that much.
I think it was learning about the Soviet Union since then, and being tuned into things I just had no idea about at the age of 11.
Reading “The Gulag Archipelago”, “1984” and simply learning more about what happened leading up to and since the Russian Revolution made me view totalitarianism in a more interested and inquisitive way. It makes you understand in your gut what an evil ideology Communism is, and how terrible total government control is when placed in the hands of malevolent people.
Another movie that really drives the point home well is “The Lives of Others”. A fascinating and frightening movie about the conduct of people living in a society where the government has an ear and an eye everywhere, and everyone knows it. The things that people have to do to avoid an interrogator’s room or survive, and what they will do to others in order to do that.
Indeed we are headed that way and for that I tremble.