Corporate malfeasance in the 1920s: Lydia Dean Pilcher/Ginny Mohler's RADIUM GIRLS

Likely to put you in mind of one of 2019's best films, Dark Waters, thanks to its scrupulous detailing of yet another of corporate America's egregious deeds, RADIUM GIRLS -- a narrative movie detailing the knowingly murderous behavior of the United States Radium Corporation toward its own workers, the young women who painted those glow-in-the-dark dials on the wrist watches of the day -- proves yet another worthy addition to the ever-growing list of Capitalism's horrendous crimes against the workers of the world.

As directed by Lydia Dean Pilcher and Ginny Mohler (shown above, left and right respectively), with a screenplay by Ms Mohler and Brittany Shaw, this 2018 movie is only now being released  either theatrically or digitally (for more on this, cut to the final paragraph). The movie is almost impossible not to recommend, thanks to the riveting and infuriating story it tells (and tells generally quite well, even given its too many digressions into documentary footage nostalgia).

The radium girls of the title (shown above in a photo from that time, below in the movie version) were young woman, often only in their teens, hired to work at this factory in Orange, New Jersey, where they were encouraged -- in order to produce more product more quickly -- to moisten their paintbrushes by placing these in their mouth, even as the ownership knew all too well that the girls were poisoning themselves irrevocably.

Much of the movie's strength comes from its astute casting of roles large and small by excellent actors who, if not "unknowns," are still a long way from household names. The only actors TrustMovies was familiar with in this large cast were Veanne Cox (of Henry Fool, and who played a glorious Flora in the off-Broadway revival of Flora, the Red Menace), John Bedford Lloyd and Joe Grifasi.)

Radium Girls is not merely a very progressive movie, it's also quite feminist, given that these women are taken such advantage of mostly by powerful men: When they began to grow ill, they were deliberately lied to about their condition and instead told that they had syphilis! The film's leading roles --  sisters, both of whom work for the radium company where their older sibling worked and subsequently died several years before -- are taken by Joey King (above, second from right, who could hardly look more "period" were she a reincarnated 1920s flapper) and Abby Quinn (below, right), who provides the soul of the film, as the sister who has ingested enough radium to end her life within a year or two.

Generally, the film works well enough, even as it adheres to fairly standard genre practices. The villains are drawn as uncaring and utterly venal, doing whatever it takes to win the day. Only in one unnecessary scene, in which bad-guy underlings in a car try to run our pedestrian heroine off the road, does the film seem unduly "movie-ish." In addition, the would-be love story -- between the younger sister and her American-Communist-party photographer beau -- could use a bit more oomph.

Otherwise, Radium Girls proves a decent enough example of Davida and Goliath/"us vs them" movie-making. Released via Juno Films and running 103 minutes, the film was to open theatrically this Friday, April 3, but what with the Corona-induced nationwide theater closings, who knows? When I can learn more about a possible digital streaming or VOD release, I'll post that info here. Or, you can click here and watch for further updates from the film's web site.

Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment is distilled in Darezhan Omirbaev's STUDENT

STUDENT is the first of Darezhan Omirbaev's films that TrustMovies has seen, but if it's a fair indication of this Kazakh film-maker's quality, little wonder this fellow's reputation is on the rise. An awfully lot happens in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's original novel Crime and Punishment, which forms the basis of Omirbaev's movie. The glory of the filmmaker's achievement is that, while he has shortened the story via less incidents and characters, he has man-aged to distill the novel wonderfully well without watering it down.

Part of the mystery and achievement of Dostoyevsky is his creation of Raskolnikov, whose character and motives are both plain and obscure. Not everything can be explained, nor does it need to be. Real character is always part mystery. Omirbaev (shown at right -- who doubles as actor here, playing a film director of the film within the film) understands this and so manages the same complex achievement. While there is plenty of motive to be found in our student's environment -- beginning with the film he is working on as part of the crew, during which he observes another young crew member given a beating because he spilled tea on the sleazy "star" -- he is also clearly and profoundly ill at ease with society and himself.

Kazakhstan today proves a near-perfect place to set a modern retelling of this tale, for evidently, its capital, Almaty, has become a paean to Capitalism run amok. Hearing a woman professor teach a class (below) on this subject is outright shocking, particularly given what us oldsters recall of the formerly Communist times. The prof's lecture is capped off perfectly with a statement from one of her students that brings everything immediately into perspective. There is also a scene involving a stalled car and a donkey that is simply staggering in its look at the "entitlement" of the fittest.

A poet appears, who takes our student back home with him to meet the family. The result is one of those weird acts of generosity that all of us are capable of at the odd time. After the student sees a local merchant refuse a poor old women any credit, he manages to get himself a black market gun (our kid has connections!). And yes, he uses it, as much, it seems, to allow him to understand of what he is capable, as for any sense of justice and righting wrongs.

We don't see the killings, which take place behind a closed door. The film is certainly shot on-the-cheap and is simply done, yet is it neither simple nor simplistic. Along the way television images consistently show us nature documentaries offering the survival-of-the-fittest theme. When, well into things, we visit another class in Kazakh, in which the teacher offers Lao-Tze philosophy so different from what we earlier heard, the effect lifts a load from our heart and mind.

Yes, we have the parental visit, with kid sister in tow, and the love object, whose purse our anti-hero manages to retrieve (above) at some physical cost after a robbery. All this is given us in quick strokes, with a minimum of dialog, yet the effect is deeply felt, both by the participants and us viewers. Omirbaev has an amazing penchant for making the tiny moment resonate. Don't blink. One of the most beautiful of these comes at a moment when our hero is undecided about entering or leaving a particular place and looks across to the face of his girl. Again, this is so quick, so barely there, and so profound.

We're never quite able to say exactly why our boy is adrift, depressed, cut off from social life. No theory fits exactly, and the mix of causes remains always just an educated guess. That is one of the things that makes Dostoyevsky resonate, and it works in this film, as well -- giving us, despite all that has gone before, an ending that is somehow quietly joyous.

Student, in Kazakh and Russian with English subtitles, which opens for a week's run tomorrow, Friday, May 31, at New York City's Anthology Film Archives, is co-presented by AFA and the Global Film Initiative and is part of the Global Lens 2013 film series.

Soaring architecture meets the "revolution" in Alysa Nahmias' & Benjamin Murray's beautiful, troubling UNFINISHED SPACES

For many of us who have long felt that, on balance, the Cuban revolution weighs in as more good than bad -- despite its troubling aspects regarding "democracy," the treatment of homosexuals, and (while admitting the great gains in education and health care) the general standard of Cuban living over more than half a century -- the new documentary UNFINISHED SPACES might very well stand as a symbol for this fractured country. The movie will make your spirits soar -- then crash -- a number of times during its more than fascinating 86 minutes.

Co-produced and co-directed by Alysa Nahmias (shown at left) and Benjamin Murray (below, right), the documentary tracks the tale of Cuba's enormously ambitious National Art Schools project, from its inception as an idea (almost immediately after the revolution's victory) to present-day. What a story!

"For Fidel, everything had to be the best in the world," recalls an architect -- a woman, too! -- of the time that Cuba's new head of state first told her what he wanted. Later, as Castro tries a game of that oh-so-bourgeois sport, golf, it was decided that the art schools would be built on the site of the former country club's golf course. That'll teach 'em! Or not.

We soon meet and hear from a parade of fine architects (the three most prominent are Roberto Gottardi, Ricardo Porro (shown in the photo at bottom) and Vittorrio Garatti, some of whose work at the schools is shown just below) and see the work they contributed to these five schools -- Modern Dance, Plastic/
Visual Arts, Dramatic Arts, Music, and Ballet -- "I wanted my school," one of them explains, "to be open -- like the Revolution. None of the schools have a main entrance; all of them are interconnected."

Notes another: "They told me that I had built a uterus!" And damned if the roof of his work doesn't remind you of just that. From building to building this is beautiful, glorious architecture, shown below and further below, combining the best of the traditional and the contemporary. (Viewing this film made me, more than anything else I've seen, want to visit Cuba.) And then, before it was finished, it all came to a close. Suddenly, it seemed, everything new in the country had to look like the dreaded (to any real artist) utilitarian, Soviet-inspired architecture.

This happened to a huge extent because, after Castro nationalized industry in Cuba, the USA went against his revolution, boycotting and Bay-of-Pigs-ing the little country, while helping turn the western world against Cuba to the point that only Mother Russia was willing to help support the island -- which then became a pawn in the Cold War between Capitalism and Communism. (Both ideologies have now been pretty much discredited in the eyes of the thinking world, so one does wonder what, if anything, is coming next? Perhaps the new Capitalism, with Socialists in charge of it to tamp down its most aggressive, greedy and stupid tendencies.)

But back to those schools and Cuba. The film takes us through the "repressed" 70s into the more open 80s and 90s, and then that "special period" (special meaning horrible) after the collapse of the USSR and no further Soviet support. For a time the schools were even taken over for housing, and their walls turned black from the fires used for cooking. One interviewee explains that he attended the school in the 1980s, along with the Cuban students, whom, he says, did not seem to think much about why the school remained unfinished. "After all, so much else in Cuba was unfinished, too."

The schools and this documentary might stand (a bit unfairly, but still...) as a symbol for all that's wonderful and disappointing about this little country. After initiating the schools project -- and then halting it completely -- it is both bracing and annoying to hear Castro praising the school once again in our new Millennium, as the film shows us. His speech could bring tears to one's eyes -- if one weren't so angry at this pompous little dictator for his decades of stupidity -- brought on to a large extent by the attitude and actions of the USA. Well, power corrupts us all.

Says one of those fine architects currently, "Despite their deterio-ration, the schools still represent the hope for the future and what the revolution meant at its beginning." Even so, or maybe because of this -- with thanks, I suspect, to the good old USA -- when the World Monuments Fund wanted to help with the restoration of the schools, it could not do this because Cuba, being that naughty "nationalizer," was still not allowed to receive any money.

Filmmakers Nahmias and Murray have done the civilized world a great service by telling the story of Cuba's National Art Schools, and you'll get one final jolt when you see the latest update as the credits roll.  Unfinished Spaces is currently touring the U.S. at various venues. Below is the remaining schedule of performances. If you're not near one of these cities, however, be sure to catch the film's national television debut, October 12, on PBS (in bold below):

October 1, 2012 Charleston, SC: Association of Preservation Technology International Annual Conference

October 4, 2012 Miami, FL: Historic Tower Theater 

October 5, 2012 Tampa, FL: Cuban Club

October 12, 2012 New York City: Cooper Union

October 12, 2012 PBS National Broadcast: Check local listings 

October 17, 2012 New Orleans, LA: School of Architecture at Tulane University

October 17, 2012 Bristol, RI: School of Architecture at Roger Williams University

October 18, 2012 Union City, NJ: Union City Center for the Performing Arts

October 19, 2012 Athens, GA: CINÉ November 2, 2012 Ithaca, NY: Cinemopolis

November 6, 2012 Ithaca, NY: Schwartz Center for Performing Arts Film Forum, Cornell University

November 20, 2012 Salt Lake City, UT: Salt Lake City Public Library

Finland, Estonia and the delightful DISCO & ATOMIC WAR: a shout-out to American TV

Who'd have thunk it? That we'd have something as Capitalistic as the American TV show Dallas to thank for helping bring down the Soviet block (the Estonian section of that block, at least). This is just one of the many surprising things Americans can learn if they watch the new documentary DISCO AND ATOMIC WAR, a movie that's amusing, sophisticated and so very "foreign."  Made by a Estonian filmmaker named Jaak Kilmi (who tells us at the film's beginning "My name is Jaak, and my life is wonderful because I can watch Finnish TV!"), this sneakily charming and thought-provoking film tells the story of how naughty airwaves from the "free" country of Finland sneaked across the border into Communist Estonia, bringing with them television shows (often from America) that were actually fun to watch. How subversive.

Mr. Kilmi, shown at left, tells his story well, in relatively concise fashion (the film lasts 80 minutes), and from various angles: family, friends, inventors, and in particular, the many ways that the Estonia puppet government, together with its Russian bosses, tried to stop this dreadful infiltration. Kilmi possesses, in addition to his film-making skills, a light touch and a wonderful sense of humor about his subject.  Together these should immediately pull American viewers into the story, which is a lot more fascinating than it might sound, as 1970s/80s Finland becomes a propaganda battleground between the USSR and the USA.

We can make fun of the television show Dallas all we want (I cer-tainly have), yet seeing it used as it is here gives the series new meaning, even a certain weight. Knight Rider, too, gets its day in the sun, as do atomic war, gas masks and, yes, disco -- the arrival of which, via TV, pulls the rug out from under poor Mother Russia yet again.

Illicit TV antennae, popping up all over Estonia (which borders Finland: You knew that) were unfortunately all too visible, so one clever fellow invents one that will work using the mercury from thermometers. When the country soon runs out of thermometers, and Russia wonders why, the citizenry claims a flu epidemic is going on. Meanwhile, everything from culture and mores to clothes and haircuts --all arriving via TV -- are changing Estonian youth. The Communist government tries to create its own competing versions of disco and fashion to entice the kids, but -- come on --  they want it made in America.  By the time the international soft-core movie hit Emmanuelle comes to Finnish TV, the game is practically over.

Utterly light-hearted, and sometimes light-headed, full of reconstructed scenes that still manage to look pretty real while entertaining us royally, Kilmi's movie is a treat -- as politically savvy as it is insightful about everything from fashion to fascism.

Disco and Atomic War, distributed by Icarus Films, opens this Friday, November 12, in New York City at the Cinema Village, with other cities/theaters to follow.  Click here for playdates in the U.S.A. and Canada over the next couple of months.

All pix are from the film itself, except that of Mr. Kilmi (courtesy of blondpoiss.blogspot.com). The filmmaker by the way, will be doing a special Q&A following the 7pm screening of his movie at the Cinema Village this Saturday, November 13.