Oliver Stone and Putin

[RocketMan]

Okay, this is personally painful to me. I fear I have to give up the ghost on my beloved mentor Oliver Stone, who first opened my eyes to deep politics in his seminal masterpiece JFK back in 1991 when I was 13 and was in the avant garde of moviemaking technique (esp. cinematography with Robert Richardson and editing), in the true trail-blazing sense of the word.

He has evidently become old and surrendered to his always latent fascination with and glorification of powerful men and even autocrats. And by surrendered I mean this:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/oliver-st ... -godfather

Oliver Stone Asks Vladimir Putin to Be His Daughter’s Godfather

Now, the article comes with all the caveats regarding Oliver Stone pieces since the 90s. But I discern that he has finally gone too far.

The misogyny and patriarchal attitude is just too much. Even VLADIMIR PUTIN has to talk him down from promising his adult daughter to be administered by the Orthodox Church.

“Does she want to become an Orthodox Christian?” Putin asked when Stone floated the idea during a sit-down in the Kremlin.

“We’ll make her that [Orthodox],” Stone replied, according to a transcript of the interview put out by the Kremlin Friday.

Putin appeared to wriggle his way out of the proposal (“You have to ask her,” he said) before Stone went on to complain about “American culture,” taking particular issue with...

Aaaaand there's more...

...what he described as a focus on gender identity and people labeling themselves as “transgender” and “cisgender.”

Stone quickly steered the conversation toward a controversial 2013 Russian law banning “homosexual propaganda” among minors, a law which experts say has prompted a surge of homophobic violence in the country.

“It seems like maybe that’s a sensible law,” Stone said.

Is there someone here with facility in Russian...? I don't have much hope, but it would be awesome if someone could check the original materials.

[JackRiddler]

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Great as the film was, there were legit reasons for gay groups to protest JFK. Stone could have handled that part differently! And it's like anyone else who lives a good long time, you know? Your appreciation of what he did in the 1980s (Salvador) or 1992 (JFK) or 2012 (History of US series) or even year before last (Ukraine on Fire, minus the naked lady on fire at the start, as if it was a Bond movie) doesn't mean you have to approve or feel responsible for what he does today, or what he did at every stage. Especially insofar as it is blessedly inconsistent, i.e., not the product of a worldview that logically leads from one to the next. You could always check out Sen. Sanders instead. There's a guy, whatever else you can say about him, who's still saying the same stuff today as 40 years ago, still with the same basic approach and energy level (incredibly enough), and you can endorse either end of it, at least moderately.

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[RocketMan]

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Great as the film was, there were legit reasons for gay groups to protest JFK. Stone could have handled that part differently! And it's like anyone else who lives a good long time, you know? Your appreciation of what he did in the 1980s (Salvador) or 1992 (JFK) or 2012 (History of US series) or even year before last (Ukraine on Fire, minus the naked lady on fire at the start, as if it was a Bond movie) doesn't mean you have to approve or feel responsible for what he does today, or what he did at every stage. Especially insofar as it is blessedly inconsistent, i.e., not the product of a worldview that logically leads from one to the next. You could always check out Sen. Sanders instead. There's a guy, whatever else you can say about him, who's still saying the same stuff today as 40 years ago, still with the same basic approach and energy level (incredibly enough), and you can endorse either end of it, at least moderately.

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That is a good summation. So Ukraine on Fire is worthwhile, then...??

Yes, I will let him go raging into that good night now, I think, without the feeling of needing to be defensive. Perhaps he would have been able to swing one more controversial, great movie out of that Martin Luther King movie he wrote and was going to direct with Jamie Foxx starring. But the family put the kibosh on that, because of the warts and all approach, evidently.

Always going to love most of his movies. Even the reviled Alexander is actually a pretty visionary swords & sandals movie in its latest, "The Ultimate Cut Blu Ray" iteration. He might have actually written a pretty good epitaph for himself in that one, come to think of it...

King Philip (Alexander's father): A king isn't born, Alexander, he is made. By steel and by suffering. A king must know how to hurt those he loves. It's lonely. Ask Heracles. Ask any of them. Fate is cruel. No man or woman can be too powerful or too beautiful without disaster befalling. They laugh when you rise too high and crush everything you've built with a whim. What glory they give in the end, they take away. They... They make of us slaves.