Seventy Years of Oppression

How can this life be allowed to be? Using footage shot over many years the story of an expat refugee (what a concept - someone whose homeland is a refugee camp!) and his friends back home in the camp in Lebanon again, as with other recently seen films, underlines the human power of community and family and the destructive force of imposed authority.

All hierarchies are ultimately toxic - e need to find a better form of social organisation here value comes neither from possession nor from oppression.

Inspirational, but 6 years old

Much better than I was expecting - well organised and interesting content strung together in 5 chapters leading to the conclusion another world is possible, and the first green shoots of that new world already exist.

Many documentaries dealing with this broad subject (ecological and climate emergency response) are either overly preachy and focused on one aspect of the problems, or simply onanistic filmmaking exercises that are ultimately part of the problem.

This one however manages to tread that delicate line between the two and provides some new (for 2014) insights

But that now (2021) begs the question what has happened since 2014 when it was being shot. Those first green shoots are still around, albeit in desperate need of watering and feeding, but everything bad has got worse - much worse. Why?

It used to be possible to believe a better world was achievable - but is it still? This might lead you down the path of concluding that physical destruction of infrastructure is now a necessary step.

Good screen acting representing bad stage acting

Well the stage acting was awful - as was presumably the norm at the time. Some of the morality of the story is dubious - the cop out ending where Tony (Ronald Coleman) is excused from facing the consequences of his actions is dubious, as is the use of the waitress as a proxy to be murdered in place of Brita (Signe Hasso), his co-star on stage and one-time wife.

Putting that aside it's a good story well filmed (as you'd expect from Cukor) that moves along nicely. Four stars only by not judging it by today's standards - otherwise it would be 2 at best.