At least when I was in grade school, we learned the very basics of how the Third Reich came to power in the early 1930s. Paramilitary gangs terrorizing the opposition, the incompetence and opportunism of German conservatives, the Reichstag Fire. And we learned about the critical importance of propaganda, the deliberate misinforming of the public in order to sway opinions en masse and achieve popular support (or at least the appearance of it).
There are many symptoms of totalitarian sickness gripping Alexander Lukashenko's Belarus. You risk being arrested for wearing red and white together, the colours of the outlawed flag of the country's opposition movement. Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has been banned, which seems rather on the nose. But these are just some of the more farcical elements, the collateral comedy spinning from the deep repression, violence and psychological wounds charted in this sobering film that follows a trio of Belarusian activists,
Considering Tarantino's penchant for championing Asian cinema and his taste for stylized hyper-violence, the pick certainly didn't come out of nowhere. But for many of those watching him chat about his favorites, the movie was as much of a myth as an actual product. Battle Royale hadn't been officially released on home video in the United States, so if you'd missed its few theatrical showings, you were left scrabbling for a bootleg version
At necessary moments in my life, Tom Stoppard, the preeminent British playwright who died last Saturday, has popped up like one of his frenetic characters, spouting enigmatic lines and leaving me thrilled, confused, and somehow heartened. The first time, I was in graduate school, reading Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, his breakthrough homage to Hamlet; I was surely thinking grad-school thoughts when I came across the line "the toenails, on the other hand, never grow at all"-the best bad joke ever.
Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in The Running Man faces a totalitarian regime by competing in a deadly television show where the disadvantaged are hunted down, ultimately overthrowing his captors with physical prowess and humor.