Guest Column: Bedtime for Bolsheviks (Movie Review) by Thomas E. Simmons

Guest Column: Bedtime for Bolsheviks (Movie Review) by Thomas E. Simmons

My first memories of Ronald Reagan are tethered to memories of my father. My dad and I shared an impression: inklings of a Reagan as a man with guts, determination, and a clarity of vision; a vision about what was right and what was wrong. We liked his leadership, my dad and me. We liked that Reagan operated under a moral framework.

That’s no easy thing, developing a morality that can guide one’s actions. In fact, for most men and women, it’s a very difficult thing. But the best of us learn to practice it, sensing that therein reside the secrets of a worthwhile life. The efforts to hone a personal moral vision to guide one’s family, one’s community, and the world are efforts well-spent.

That is what both my dad and I perceived in Reagan’s 1979 campaign, his third presidential bid. And that’s my first memory of Reagan.

The film Reagan (2024) condenses the life of a man (who lived to the age of ninety-three) into two hours twenty-one minutes. We shouldn’t expect an exhaustive exploration, At most, a film presents a theme linked to conflict and resolution. We’ve only got a bit over two hours to work with. But critics have seen the film as flawed because it omits sizable chunks of Reagan’s life.

Here are a few such comments: “Reagan the movie has a strained relationship with reality.”

“The new biopic leans into this nostalgia with ahistorical bravado and selective story-telling.”

“Reagan can’t even trace the broad outlines of your stock biopic.”

“Reagan is an insubstantive [sic] Greatest Hits compendium.”

“Reagan’s dedication to narrow themes proves limiting.”

It’s fair to note that the film does not explore Ronald Reagan’s life in the same depth as a book. The film cannot, for example, compete with Bob Spitz’s Reagan: An American Journey (2018), though Spitz allows himself 880 pages to explore the rich, nuanced life of the 40th president (the equivalent of a 20-hour book-on-tape).

So, yes, the film is selective; its theme, focused – yet important. The primary lens through which the film presents a drama is Ronald Reagan’s anti-communism. Reagan saw communism as a totalitarian threat as serious as the German Nazis, the Italian Fascists, or the Imperialist Japanese. This same theme is considered in The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2006) by Paul Kengor.

Kengor, who also wrote God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (2004)) penned the script for Reagan. (Tellingly, Chauncy K. Robinson’s review of Reagan for “People’s World” (a/k/a “The Daily Worker”) refers to Kengor’s second book by omitting the first two words of said title (i.e., God and – and I doubt that the omission was accidental.)

Kengor’s assessment of Ronald Reagan in term of Reagan’s anti-communism (and, to a lesser extent, Reagan’s spiritualism), permeates the film, Reagan. The film offers an abridged Reagan biography told by a KGB agent named Petrovich (a composite of actual KGB operatives who observed Ronald Reagan’s routines over several decades). Through this lens it presents a coherent narrative, somewhat inspirational, though admittedly not the greatest movie of all time.

My biggest nails-on-the-chalkboard complaint of Reagan is the CGI. Filmed in Oklahoma, the film digitally reconfigures the Oklahoma City Capitol Building as the U.S. Capitol and a masonic lodge as the White House. It’s a fakery that incorrectly insinuates that the film’s story is similarly contrived. The film’s truths should not be shrouded in computerized flimflam.

The film’s score is similarly unnerving. Repeatedly, President Reagan (played by the excellent Dennis Quaid) will offer a quip and the orchestra will endorse it in swelling strings. The instrumental emphasis is overdone, cheap, and preachy. It reminded me of Gandhi (1982). Ronald Reagan’s words, actions, and moral vision do not need clunky underscoring to hit home.

See the film. But also devote some effort to the study of the moral vision of Ronald Reagan without all the Hollywood limitations – and the schmaltz.

Thomas E. Simmons
University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law
Vermilion, SD