10/2/08: Daniel (1983)
This one got a DVD release over the summer, but with no extras. That’s a shame.
Daniel
would be even more fun with self-glorifying commentaries from the
people behind this bizarre film. Scripted by E.L. Doctorow from his
source novel,
Daniel is
pretty much the story of the tortured offspring of Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg— an American couple who, as we now know more than ever, were
traitorous scum who attempted to help Stalin oppress (what thankfully
remains) an untold number of innocents.
The Rosenbergs, of course, became martyrs to good Leftists who insisted
that the Red Scare led to the couple’s 1953 execution for smuggling
secrets to the USSR. The recent (even further) confirmation of their
guilt was handled quite stoically by the Rosenberg’s’ activist
children. Really, what could those professional delusionists say at
this point? Besides, they’re ready to retire now.
This fictionalized take on their tale is a weird mix of hilarious bathos, genuinely sad moments, and seriously fun weirdness.
Daniel
didn’t do well at the box office, though. The reviews weren’t that
great, mostly because director Sidney Lumet didn’t insist on the
innocence of his ersatz Rosenbergs. This merry mess was also a
particularly screwy follow-up to Lumet’s excellent work on
The Verdict.
The film begins with Daniel Isaacson (Timothy Hutton) looking into the
camera and explaining the fundamentals of electricity. This windy and
wispy beardo finds it very meaningful that the USSR and the USA are the
world leaders in producing electricity. His point has something to do
with America’s use as the electric chair as “the most humane means to
putting someone to death.” Well, it’s more humane than whatever they
had in the USSR.
Then we get the title of the movie: “Daniel.” In imposing letters, like it’s a big deal.
Cut to some protestors outside of the White House. It’s hard to tell if
it’s vintage footage from the ’60s, or recent stuff from the ’80s. The
hippies took a while to catch up with the times. The pigs start
clubbing the hippies, and then we’re celebrating present-day
Thanksgiving with Daniel, his bruised sister Susan, and their adoptive
parents (one of whom is John Rubinstein in old-age make-up worthy of a
high-school stage production).
Daniel and Susan have just come into equal possession of a trust. We
can already see that life as a Commie is hard. Susan is talking about
the importance of resistance, and how she wants to use the money to
start a foundation for revolutionary studies. She’s instantly more
irritating than Daniel—who points out that the trust she refers to as
blood money paid for her college education and straight teeth. Susan
complains that Daniel treats all her ideas as immediately suspect. Good
call, Daniel.
Daniel laughs when Susan declares, “What happened to the Isaacsons is
history!” This gets his sister even more upset: “You really think they
were guilty!”
Sadly, Daniel doesn’t use this opportunity to make the prosecution’s
case. Instead, he flashes back to before he was born, when his parents
(Mandy Patinkin and Lindsay Crouse) meet cute while protesting for
unions outside of a printing plant. Turns out Paul and Rochelle attend
the same college, where they argue with some Jew about how Stalin
helped Hitler come into power. Daniel’s future father has some big
point to make about that claim, but it doesn’t really make sense. He
declares it with authority, though.
The film dwells for a while on this sweet Socialist romance. Crouse is
awfully fetching as Rochelle, even though she’s shot through a sickly
filter that’s supposed to be sepia. It looks more like the Red Scare
was nothing compared to the menace of yellow jaundice. (Let’s also note
that one scene reveals that Rochelle has given money to the defense of
the Scottsboro Boys, who—as
others have noted—remain the only Leftist martyrs who haven’t turned out to be really guilty.)
We also see Paul talking about his days in the Army, and how he learned
a few things from “those Georgia crackers who live in the red clay”
about the kindness of “the masses who didn’t have an education.” It’s
difficult not to fast-forward to the execution.
Then we’re back to the present-day, where Daniel is yelling about his
wife putting ketchup on a club sandwich because he’s really upset over
his sister’s attempted suicide. Susan’s in a Massachusetts mental
hospital, which is a good place for anyone who thinks her parents were
innocent. She’s staying at the Newton State Hospital. Isn’t that Barney
Frank’s district? That explains a lot.
Then it’s time to another flashback to Daniel’s youth, when he and his
sister are brought out to a rally for their convicted parents. The
frightened kids become pioneers in audience-surfing. Then it’s an even
further flashback where Daniel’s dad lectures him about how the kid was
suckered into buying Wheaties just because Joe DiMaggio is on the box.
“He sells his name to the cereal company,” explains Dad, “when he
probably drinks beer and smokes cigarettes. But what is he? He’s a
worker…no better than a man who works in a factory.”
Also, Daniel is informed that “there are Negro baseball players who
aren’t allowed to play.” Daniels dad worries a lot about what’s being
done “for the working class and the Negroes.” There’s one black guy
who’s always hanging around Mr. Isaacson’s radio repair shop, but we
don’t know what’s been done for him. The black guy never has any lines.
Then grown Daniel returns to speak to the camera about the ancient
ritual of being drawn and quartered, which he explains was a form of
execution only practiced on peasants. That’s not true; Christopher Lee
was drawn and quartered in The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism, and he
was a nobleman.
We finally get the flashback where government agents arrest Daniel’s
dad. They lug out bundles of the Daily Worker from the radio shop, and
fail to treat Daniel’s baseball card collection with any real respect.
It’s like the Feds don’t know that Joe DiMaggio is a good capitalist
tool.
Then the film gets kind of sad, as we see how Daniel’s creepy Mom and
Dad ruin their children’s lives. (Mom eventually gets arrested, too, as
the kids learn when that black guy is finally allowed to talk.) Things
get funny again when Daniel—wracked with guilt about his loony
sister—starts up The Isaacson Foundation for Revolutionary Studies and
starts looking into his parent’s case. We get the usual nonsense about
hidden evidence and careerist judges. Still, one old lawyer advises
Daniel to leave the case alone. His parents weren’t saints.
There’s another flashback where young Daniel becomes the Oliver Twist
of the Bronx. Then we get another lecture to the camera about capital
punishment in czarist Russia, which was much like the Old American
South.
Daniel visits the widow of the Isaacsons’ original defense attorney.
She’s got a very nice house, and a maid. She tells Daniel that his
parents were creeps, but she’s really there to fill out plot points
about how the Isaacsons wouldn’t let their attorney bring in some vital
witnesses. That’s setting up the script’s big compromise, which is that
the Isaacsons were innocent, but were executed while covering for other
Commies.
That’s almost as funny as the next scene, which flashes back to the
Isaacson trial. We’re supposed to be outraged that the couple’s
political affiliations are being presented as motive. We’d be more
outraged if they weren’t.
Back to the present-day, and Daniel is still being convinced that his
parents were unfairly executed to cover up for other Commies. We’re
told that the Communist Party abandoned the Isaacsons during their
trial, so we’re probably supposed to have fallen asleep during that big
rally sequence. The real villain seems to have been a dentist named
Mindish, who might have informed on the Isaacsons. He’s described as “a
very normal man perfectly capable of joining the Communist Party for no
more than an exalted sense of himself.” The film’s other Commies aren’t
notably modest.
Things are starting to wrap up, as hinted when Daniel’s next flashback
takes us to visiting day at prison. Mom’s turn with the kids is very
sad. Then the tone changes to what’s meant to be tragic and plays as
hilarious. It seems Dad has gone fairly loony behind bars, and he
presents the kids with his extensive collection of dried cockroaches in
a cigar box. You know what would be a really happy ending? If those
cockroaches ended up being the trust bequeathed to Daniel.
Daniel—who’s always had that wispy beard, but once dressed kind of
normal—now resembles an old hippie who got lost in the wilderness of
Woodstock. He shows up at the office of Dr. Mindish’s daughter. It
turns out that Linda Mindish is a dentist, too. In that same spirit,
Daniel goes into the Isaacson family business of being a raving loon.
He harasses the poor lady with a lot of conspiracy theories—starting
with how her family sure came into money after the execution of the
Isaacsons.
Linda doesn’t point out that Daniel’s the guy with the trust. She’s
still pretty angry. She rightfully lectures Daniel on how he’s become
an addled loser, and how her shunned father never got to enjoy being a
hero to the cause. This gets Daniel to rant even more about Dacron
suits and the nobility of his own gullibility.
“What are you talking about?” asks the dentist. Daniel doesn’t have an
answer. He’s righteously outraged, though, and that’s what counts.
The movie actually ends with Daniel and his wife at a huge modern-day
peace rally at Central Park. Susan finally killed herself at some point
in the story, and he’s learned to embrace his activist heritage. He
didn’t learn much from that flashback to being frightened at that other
rally, though. Daniel and his wife are laughing it up while holding
their infant son, but the poor kid looks scared and miserable.
Before all this, though, we finally get to enjoy the Isaacson
execution. The one for Dad is kind of uneventful, but Mom gets the full
martyr treatment. Before sitting in the electric chair, she kisses the
black prison matron—who’s overcome with emotion and has to leave the
room. Also, Mom kicks out the rabbi in attendance, while bringing up
Daniel in a pretty weird segue. “Let our deaths be his bar mitzvah,”
she declares. Shalom!
And we never do get to see John Rubinstein’s character as a young man,
so that awful old-age makeup never makes sense. You’d think the studio
could’ve at least dug up some lost footage for the DVD.
Daniel is 130 minutes long, but there must be a rough cut out there that runs for four hours.
Make it your own: Here’s that bare-bones
DVD, or go for a cheap old
VHS tape. There are still a few memorably moronic moments we left out of this rambling entry.
