Featured Audience Ratings

• Walter M

  
  [font=Century Gothic]"The Freethinker" is an engrossing multimedia biopic about Swedish playwright August Strindberg(Anders Mattsson) who lived from 1849-1912, not only dramatizing events from his life in a nonlinear fashion, but also uses photographs, intertitles and scenes… More
  [font=Century Gothic]"The Freethinker" is an engrossing multimedia biopic about Swedish playwright August Strindberg(Anders Mattsson) who lived from 1849-1912, not only dramatizing events from his life in a nonlinear fashion, but also uses photographs, intertitles and scenes from some of his plays. Filmmaker Peter Watkins uses that framework to show the relationship of the artist to society. At the beginning of his career, Strindberg took aim at the conservative climate of his native country, nominally a republic(only a small percentage of the population could vote), corrupt and nonresponsive towards its citizens, with a great deal of emigration to boot. He was also an early proponent of feminism, at least until he started to feel threatened by the success of his wife, Siri(Lena Settervall), on the stage. At which point, he reverted to his father's paternalistic and puritanical attitudes, possible proof there is only so far a person can be ahead of the society where he resides.[/font] [font=Century Gothic]Where Watkins does not succeed here is in making a direct connection to the present day.(He was much more successful in his movie about the 1871 Paris commune.) There is some debate about how mass media only serves to distract us(The worst offenders are reality programming and celebrity gossip. But a little distraction can be actually be a good thing.) but we can choose to ignore them and discover new sources of information on our own(hopefully not just ones we agree with). Yes, it may take more time to find valuable sources that we can use but the information is out there if only we took the time to look, which is especially true in the case of a provocative filmmaker like Peter Watkins. [/font]