michaelberanek275

I was privileged to attend a screening in Camden with the fillmaker and a number of the climate & civil rights defenders featured present, which made for an especially moving experience.

Whilst hardly an easy watch, it is to be recommended to everyone as, like in the 1930s as Pastor Martin Niemöller wrote in his famous poem "First they came for the Communists, And I did not speak out..." Now I'd suggest in the UK it would be - first they came for the climate activists, then the Palestine protesters - and then after they get around to the leftists, then the trade unionists.. it will be as the Pastor's final line "Then they came for me, And there was no one left, To speak out for me.' This is a detailed nearly 2 hour chronical of the work of JSO activists and the increasingly insane oppression they have endured, and continue to suffer, from the police and courts of this nominally 'democratic' country. It is soul-destroying to witness such brave, sweet, peaceful and principled folk being ground down one by one by a legal system that has so obviously now become an instrument of the capitalist ruling class on steroids. There should be no illusions watching this that the police serve to protect the public on the whole. The evidence is clear: the ruling class has wesponised the force into a high-tech instrument of crushing intimidation whenever challenged by even peaceful protest.

It's encouraging though to reflect that polluting corporate interests are clearly now riled, that tectonic cracks are emerging, as the ruling class state now resorts to such frantic multilevel oppression. It is clear from this film, which has no narration, merely the voices of the participants, that these defenders are at the cutting edge of protest, crossing that line where they make real progress, on behalf of the working class, the planet and indeed all of us.

The film is an education too on the spider web of new laws, conditions, and police procedures that are being laid out for anyone threatening the vested interests that are enslaving ordinary people and thrashing the whole planet.

I hope you watch this with the same admiration I now have for these pioneers, and that it fosters a feeling of solidarity wherever you are politically, and please encourage others to see this. Urgently, before there's no one left but you.

Very professionally produced film using a mixture of testimony from people involved in the events, including a policeman, and of dramatised segments with actors playing the present-day witnesses. It's a mixture of informative and detailed documentary and exciting spy thriller. It was inspiring to see the courage of the young working class Brits, mostly communists, or socialists, willing to risk imprisonment and torture at the hands of the apartheid state in solidarity with the cause of freedom for black South Africans. There's a great use of mainstream cinematic method - for instance I had no idea I'd be quite so impressed and excited by the sight of a set of exploding ANC leaflet-bombs after such a great build-up of ticking-time tension. The London Recruits were only a few score in total, but they played a role disproportionate to their small number in rebuilding the once 'smashed' underground resistance when naive activists were decimated or in exile, making cunning use of the regime's prejudices about colour. The kind of historical international solidarity testified to here encourages us to keep the flame of liberation alive for people today in Latin America, and of course for Palestine.

Unforgiven is not a classic Western, I dare say not half as 'fun' for casual fans of the classic genre-- it's more a graveside deconstruction, or a truly modern evolution of a tired form. Eastman uses the Western mythos to study human nature, in particular the consequences of violence, and the moral ambiguity in real people, whether they be called heroes or villains. I'm not sure I can see an old Western now at all!

More and more contemporary movies dabble with the genre. Some very well, like Bone Tomahawk (2015) - a great Kurt Russell period horror, and others e.g. Where Kevin Costner plays another a modern last-legs cowboy of vengeance in thriller Let Him Go (2020). Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) sets out to subvert the genre, but Clint Eastwood in this movie from over 20 years ago proved himself the original prophet...

The best line in Unforgiven comes from Clint Eastwood's protagonist, the sad and ambigous Bill Munny, which works to obscure the memory of Dirty Harry to barely a shadow...

"It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have."