It seems NPR is not going to be the only national media outlet to laud Hollywood communists and the documentaries that laud them. In a set of reviews of current documentaries on Thursday, Claudia Puig of USA Today singled out "Trumbo," a documentary about Communist Party member and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who was apparently an "irrepressible contrarian" and not a disciplined prole:
This bittersweet film celebrates the life and artistry of blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, not only with archival footage of the House hearings on un-American activities, but also wonderful readings of Trumbo’s prose by actors including Liam Neeson, Paul Giamatti, Joan Allen, Josh Lucas, and Kirk and Michael Douglas. From scripts, letters, and speeches, we get a multi-dimensional look at this principled and irrepressible contrarian. It is not only an elegy to a talented writer, but a celebration of the power of words.
Words that apparently mean nothing to Puig: "Gulag," "Stalinist," and well, "contrarian," since what the Gulag or the graveyard is where "contrarians" went in the Soviet Union during Trumbo's lifetime.
(I couldn't find Puig's mini-reviews online.)
