Both Bronwen and I liked this interesting film written and directed by Tim Robbins, although I think I enjoyed it more because it hit on more stuff I know well. It compresses lots of stuff into a short historical frame, including stuff that didn’t happen at that time, but it is fiction not history. The film looks at the fascinating theater environment of New York during the late Depression period as the Federal Theater Project attempted to bring theater, and political theater at that, to the masses. It considers the efforts around the ill-starred musical by Marc Blitzstein, “The Cradle Will Rock,” and features fine actors overacting to create John Houseman, Orson Welles, John Derrek (underplayed well as the sleazy union-hack villain with clever irony because of his flip to Reaganism in later years), and the FTP folks. The secondary, and equally fascinating, plots spin around US capital’s support for Italian fascism as anticommunism, the art world’s amorality, Diego Rivera’s mural, Nelson Rockefeller’s naiveté, and WR Hearst’s utter banality. Fun and inspiring, it tries to capture the swirl of events and just can’t quite pull off the pacing at first. Still, it’s a very fine effort and well worth the viewing. The ending left me quite breathless. Wonderful work by Susan Sarandan, John Turturro, Reuben Blades, John Cusak, Joan Cusak, Vanessa Redgrave, with an astounding bit from Bill Murray. He was amazing. Very well acted all around, and three cheers for Tim Robbins. See this one!