My 15 year old son came home with this "documentary" yesterday, and I decided that I better keep an eye on what he was watching.
While I will credit the tremendous amount of research that went into this movie, I would have to say that it is fiction based on true historical events. The communist spin that was put on this is abysmal. Don't get me wrong, while being a firm believer in an open market system, I do see the pros and cons of both Capitalism and Socialism. However, this story only looks at the dirty underbelly of the free market system while allowing the viewer to believe that living in Soviet Russian or East Germany was as fine as a summer frolic on the beach until evil capitalists defeated the communist way and ruined the whole party. They even make the fall of the Berlin Wall seem like a tragedy that capitalists couldn't wait to exploit.
The use of the same propaganda phrases used over and over again in this movie sickened me on more than one level. Comparing Capitalism to shock therapy, which was linked to and compared to torture and interrogation methods. They then made reference to (insert capitalist pig here) using any political, social, or environmental tragedy as "instigating the shock treatment" or simply "the shock" by using it as a way to defeat the will of the people who they are enforcing their capitalist regime on.
At the end of the movie, I felt that I had to have a debriefing session with my son and his friend. While many of the unfortunate events that took place in the film were indeed blood on the capitalists hands, there is more blood on the hands of socialism/slash communism than even the Third Reich. I had to explain to him that while there was a rough transition from communism to capitalism in Eastern Europe, it was not unfortunate event that the Soviet Union broke and the Berlin Wall came down. I had to inform him that it was no picnic living in the Soviet states and that many had risked and lost their lives in order to climb the wall or flee other Communist states.
It really is a shame that people forget history and that it really is doomed to repeat itself. I would recommend anybody who watched this to balance it out by learning about the bloody rise to power by the Soviets. Watch a documentary about Stalin, or the Chernobyl melt down and how the Soviets mishandled it and allowed their own people to suffer by having too much pride for western help.
The bottom line here is that films like this are powerful form of propaganda and should be taken with a rather large grain of salt. It's just too bad that impressionable 15 year olds lack the knowledge, experience, and reasoning that is needed to watch this.
2 stars is generous and is only given because the video was well researched and well made.
While I will credit the tremendous amount of research that went into this movie, I would have to say that it is fiction based on true historical events. The communist spin that was put on this is abysmal. Don't get me wrong, while being a firm believer in an open market system, I do see the pros and cons of both Capitalism and Socialism. However, this story only looks at the dirty underbelly of the free market system while allowing the viewer to believe that living in Soviet Russian or East Germany was as fine as a summer frolic on the beach until evil capitalists defeated the communist way and ruined the whole party. They even make the fall of the Berlin Wall seem like a tragedy that capitalists couldn't wait to exploit.
The use of the same propaganda phrases used over and over again in this movie sickened me on more than one level. Comparing Capitalism to shock therapy, which was linked to and compared to torture and interrogation methods. They then made reference to (insert capitalist pig here) using any political, social, or environmental tragedy as "instigating the shock treatment" or simply "the shock" by using it as a way to defeat the will of the people who they are enforcing their capitalist regime on.
At the end of the movie, I felt that I had to have a debriefing session with my son and his friend. While many of the unfortunate events that took place in the film were indeed blood on the capitalists hands, there is more blood on the hands of socialism/slash communism than even the Third Reich. I had to explain to him that while there was a rough transition from communism to capitalism in Eastern Europe, it was not unfortunate event that the Soviet Union broke and the Berlin Wall came down. I had to inform him that it was no picnic living in the Soviet states and that many had risked and lost their lives in order to climb the wall or flee other Communist states.
It really is a shame that people forget history and that it really is doomed to repeat itself. I would recommend anybody who watched this to balance it out by learning about the bloody rise to power by the Soviets. Watch a documentary about Stalin, or the Chernobyl melt down and how the Soviets mishandled it and allowed their own people to suffer by having too much pride for western help.
The bottom line here is that films like this are powerful form of propaganda and should be taken with a rather large grain of salt. It's just too bad that impressionable 15 year olds lack the knowledge, experience, and reasoning that is needed to watch this.
2 stars is generous and is only given because the video was well researched and well made.