With regard to the content, I don’t think it is possible to overstate the social scars of 70 years of Communism, the habits that came into being, the tortures and traumas and horrors which happened and could not be talked about. The can be no doubt the main villain was a Communist, and very likely, based on the script, that he was either KGB, or involved in war atrocities.
I will add that some years after watching it, the Russian movie Burnt by the Sun still affects me when I think about it. Most movies come and go with me. Some scenes of bad movies stay with me. And some entire movies, their Gestalt, stay with me. That one was one of them. If you choose to watch it, nothing happens, seemingly, for a very long time. Then it grabs you by the balls, if I might borrow a metaphor from the movie I just watched.
There is so much horror in history. I don’t know why so many Americans are so fucking stupid as to want to destroy everything good and unique we have built here, all in favor of horrific ideas which have been tried thousands of times over the centuries.
All it would take is a few years of the media and academics telling the truth to sort everything out, but these fucking assholes won’t do it. They are all like the priest in this movie Leviathan. They speak of truth, but it is a meaningless word. They speak of justice, but it means nothing. They speak of goodness, but they carry evil everywhere.
I don’t see any incompatibility with me being kinder in my daily life, and remaining firmly committed to this war of ideas. As I have said often, emotional growth, for me, will not mean changing any of my ideas–I have built them carefully, and tested them often–but rather my level and type of engagement with people with whom I disagree.