Day 358: Trumbo (March 1)

EIGHT

At the end of Trumbo, the screenwriter that gives his name to this movie about the black list in Hollywood at the '40s and '50s says something extremely accurate and relevant. After a few years from that persecution, people were getting used to laugh at it, calling it stupid. And despite the fact that it is really laughable, Trumbo says how it endangered the life of many. Some, as himself, had being imprisoned. Others had lost their jobs, family and even their lives. This way, the importance of movies like Trumbo is always remind us to not take lightly what seems just a nonsense nowadays. 

Here in Brazil we've seen a movement asking the return of military dictatorship, a coup to that took place on the '60s, supported by the same US paranoia about communism that make such a thing as the black list in Hollywood possible. It wasn't silly at all what had happened here, but still some take it as if people hadn't been murdered for nothing. Not that should have a reason for a government to kill citizens.

The thing is that, under false pretenses, everything is justified in this kind persecution.. We witness it today under the disguise of fighting terrorism. Dalton Trumbo's journey reminded me a dear older friend that saw her husband being arrested under those convenient reasons by a minority that is fighting for power simply by taking people out. It is perverse how easy it is to justify eliminating someone that is a disturbance to a few - in any social scope. It is a hideous power play, one that costs many and many lives.

My friend told me how her dinnerware had 70 dishes, her house was full of people every night. After the arrest, just a few remained by their side. I think there's no need to say that they were the best. The true friends. She told me sadder stories about this time, creating a picture that is horrible to see. Now it is history, but what they went through during that awful time marked their lives forever in a hurtful and absolutely futile way.

Trumbo talks about that in the movie industry scene. We recognise most of its characters, specially at the last part of this film. We laugh, wondering about what had really happened. At the end, we are acutely reminded of how infamous that time was. As I've said before, a look at the past that puts us right into our own times and current events.

John Wayne is depicted here as a part of the blacklisting. I've read about his involvement with this horrid witch hunt at the time I saw High Noon. The Fred Zinnemann film is a representation of all the coward craziness that was taking place on the US and Hollywood. Of course John Wayne declared himself against this amazing movie about the cowardice of a whole town against the man that wants just to do right to those he vowed to protect. 

Cowardice is a sad, hideous thing, a gun on the hands of a few, the way by which some want to feel strong and not the excruciating sh*t they are. But this is just what makes everything worse to those who resort to such a perverse way of feeling strong. People that has no qualms in  hurt others that are just caring about their own business.

Trumbo. Directed by Jay Roach. Cast: Bryan Craston (nominate for a Oscar),
Diane Lane, Hellen Mirren. Writers: John McNamara from the book by
Bruce Cook. USA, 2015, 124 min., Dolby Digital, Color (Cinema).