![]() Lumet's direction is sensitive and fascinating. But Doctorow's screenplay for "Daniel" is excellent and extraordinarily multi-layered. A few of Lumet's films were marred by their scripts ("The Appointment", "Power", "Family Business", "A Stranger Among Us"). Everything works in this uncompromising picture. And Lumet is right when he writes in his informative book "Making Movies": "Despite its critical and financial failure, I think it's one of the best pictures I've ever done." The film proves again Lumet's ability to tell complex, emotionally absorbing, unsentimental stories. Timothy Hutton turned down a million-dollar offer on a film and played Daniel instead for about 25000 dollars. Many people worked on the film for the minimum salary set by the union. It was about seven years before he got the chance to realize this project. ![]() Lumet himself is politically left-leaning, and "Daniel" is probably one of his most personal works. Sidney Lumet is one of the great directors of the American cinema. In its criticism of death penalty and McCarthyism, "Daniel" is also a political statement. "Daniel" illuminates from Daniel Isaacson's view the history of the American left from the 1930s to the late 1960s, including the different left movements. Lumet described the movie in a Village Voice interview in the following way: "To me, "Daniel" is the story of a boy who buries himself with his parents, and spends the rest of his life trying to climb out of the grave." The film uses a complex flashback structure to tell its story. Another theme of "Daniel" is the wish of human beings to understand their parents. Lumet treated these themes again later in his fascinating "Running on Empty" (1988), starring River Phoenix, Christine Lahti and Judd Hirsch. And it is about the search of one's place in life. The film shows how children can be affected by the lives of their parents. Doctorow's novel "The Book of Daniel", which it is based upon, are inspired by the controversial Rosenberg case. Sidney Lumet's film "Daniel" (1983) and E.L. In the late 1960s, after an attempted suicide of his politically active sister Susan (Amanda Plummer), the rather unpolitical Daniel (Timothy Hutton) tries to find out what exactly happened in the past, tries to understand his parents' lives, tries to help his sister and to get along with his own life. ![]() Their children Daniel and Susan can't get over this. Paul and Rochelle Isaacson (Mandy Patinkin, Lindsay Crouse) were executed in the early 1950s for alleged espionage. Or even under democracy, to remind people of despotism.ĭANIEL "Some day I shall understand" Some words abouts the complex story. As long as totalitarian governments exist, "Daniel" will remain a relevant movie. On the 50th anniversary of his parents' execution, Robert Meeropol reminded the world that the "War on Terrorism" has replaced the Cold War. They established the Rosenberg Fund for Children, to protect the families of political prisoners. After he and his brother found out the truth behind their parents' execution (that the McCarthyites wanted to eliminate any opposition), they sued the government and won. I actually know Robert Meeropol (Julius and Ethel's real son). Mandy Patinkin and Lindsay Crouse play the Julius and Ethel characters Paul and Rochelle Isaacson, while Timothy Hutton is their son Daniel, trying all his life to try and find out what happened to them, and what was behind it. The story of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 on the trumped-up charge of spying for the Soviet Union, "Daniel" is fictionalized but still relevant.
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