June 14, 2004

Rosenbergs’ HBO Bomb

For the third time this year, HBO has aired an almost embarrassingly preachy left-wing film, and also caught hell for it. First came Oliver Stone’s laudatory documentary about Fidel Castro, which was so blatantly slanted towards the Cuban dictator that the network made him go back and re-film it. Then there was the ridiculous Maggie Gyllenhaal drama “Strip Search,” which tried to draw a moral equivalence between China’s gulags and America’s War on Terror; the network was so ashamed of that dud that it broadcast it with nearly no promotion whatsoever.

Now comes “Heir To An Execution,” a documentary about the Rosenberg case that was directed by the executed spy couple’s granddaughter, Ivy Meeropol. The documentary, shot in the irritating, Moore/Broomfield it’s-all-about-the-director’s-journey style, ‘Execution’ is a sad story of three generations of a family in denial- as after 50 years of lying about Julius and Ethel’s complete innocence their defenders have now been reduced to, as the New York Times put it in a generally negative review, “their shrinking claim of innocence,” that the Rosenbergs were indeed major spies but did not steal the atomic bomb.

Indeed, the Rosenberg relatives and other 80-year-old Communists interviewed in the film sound a lot like conservatives talking about Abu Ghraib- their arguments vary from “they didn’t do it,” to “maybe they did it, but it doesn’t’ matter” to “maybe they did it, but what the other side did was worse”- and none of them are the slightest bit convincing.

The 80-year-olds all describe becoming Communists as result of Depression-era poverty- yet have nothing to say about the similar starving and shortages of the 1980s-era Soviet Union- much less the hundreds of millions murdered by Communist tyranny worldwide in the 20th century.

“Heir to An Execution” is a documentary that made me long for the honesty, clarity, and subtlety of Morgan Spurlock and Michael Moore. Ignore it, and seek out the similar but vastly superior Jewish-family crime documentary “Capturing the Friedmans” instead.

Posted by Stephen Silver at June 14, 2004 09:46 PM
Comments

If it makes you long for the "honesty, clarity and subtlety" of Moore...it's gotta be really bad.

I've always wondered though, what do the Rosenberg's decendents and these other 80 y/o communists have to say about things like the Venona cable?

Posted by: jaws at June 14, 2004 10:50 PM

Oh, the usual- either that they're forged, or that they prove bad things the government did. My favorite is when Julius and Ethel's son acknowledges that his father "did stuff."

Posted by: Stephen Silver at June 14, 2004 11:30 PM

Sounds like nothing new then. I am scared though for the likely forthcoming David Horowitz/Ann Coulter response articles about this documentary (thank goodness neither of them seems to be into making documentaries)

I've never seen "Capturing the Friedmans"--is it good?

Posted by: jaws at June 15, 2004 11:59 AM

Having seen the doc, I think that your reaction is a little harsh. These kids were raised to believe that their parents were innocent and you can't blame them for having a hard time believing otherwise, but the Venona cable does seem to indicate that while Julius was a very active spy, Ethel was not involved in anything at all, let alone anything worth the death penalty. Frankly, I don't know enough about the case to comment too much, but I think you're comments on the film have more to do with the your opinions of what happened, and less to do with the merits of the filmmaking.
If this is her journey, as you say, of course she's going to get her family's side of events. It told the story from a certain point of view, but I found it interesting to learn about what the two boys went through during the time leading up to and immediately after their parents' execution.
All in all, not a bad documentary, but not a great one either. Just interesting.

Posted by: Dan Sichel at June 15, 2004 06:41 PM
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