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Pro-Liberty, Pro-Market Movies: Your Recommendations
On Tuesday, the Foundation for Economic Education posted a column about the Bollywood movie Guru. Interested by their claim that it was “The Best Pro-Market Film You’ve Never Seen,” I decided to give it a viewing. I was very pleased. Guru has some hurdles to clear, but its story is right out of a Rand novel.
After viewing the movie, I started to compile in my head a list of other pro-market, pro-liberty movies. I’m interested in what yours are as well. Maybe the list we compile can be used as a “Ricochet Recommended Viewing” list.
Here are the movies on my list (so far):
- The Atlas Shrugged Trilogy: Pt1, Pt2, Pt3
- Chuck Norris vs. Communism
- 1776
- The Lost City
- To Live
- Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
- Harry Potter: Pt5, Pt6, P7.1, P7.2
- Guru
- Comes a Bright Day
So, what are yours?
Published in Entertainment
Yes, definitely. If only for the very Ayn-Randesque Edna Mode.
Aliens is better for that than Alien. “Take off, nuke it from orbit. Only way to be sure.”
If by liberty you mean “near-completely destroying our culture and society in the name of progress”, then yeah, that’d be liberty I guess. I enjoyed Fiddler as a kid, but watching it as an adult, it hit me that almost everything Teyve valued and loved and fought for was wiped away not just by the revolution, but by his own kids. One of ’em ran off with a Communist, for Yahweh’s sake. Everyone loves singing “Tradition!”, but the movie is actually about the death of tradition, and foreshadowing our own rebellious youth generations, about how it was the children that destroyed traditional Judaism in Europe as much as any pogrom. It’s actually kind of depressing.
“Chuck Norris vs Communism” is streaming on Netflix. This movie is outstanding.
Tucker: The Man and His Dream.
Good story of big business conspiring with government to block the innovative newcomer.
What’s the most important difference between the original and the remake?
In the original, the Reds complained about the movie but we showed it anyway and they died out.
In the remake, the Reds complained about the movie, Hollywood kissed their collective (see what I did there? See what I did there?) rears, and digitally changed the villains to North Korea (The Norks? Invading the US? Seriously? Someone thought this would actually fly?). In the remake, the Reds won.
You mean The Lives Of Others by von Donnersmarck. Possibly the greatest anticommunist film ever made. Buckley thought it may have been the finest film he ever saw. You should all see it. You will weep.
Goodbye, Lenin!, Other People’s Lives, and 1,2,3 would make an interesting DDR triple-feature. Goodbye, Lenin! is a charming, sweet picture IIRC.
Maybe we should follow this up with a post on the most blatant pro-Communist films ever made (or perhaps more generally, anti-freedom).
“Reds” has to be high on this list.
Agreed; one of my favorite films. Here’s Buckley’s take:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/221039/great-lives-william-f-buckley-jr
LOL. I actually put that in the draft of the post, and then deleted it. Reds is the first thing I think of when it’s loving paeans to the Soviets.
High Noon. Even though it was meant to be a sort of leftist allegory about McCarthyism, I came away with a very conservative message after watching it. Apparently I’m not the only one:
https://pjmedia.com/blog/the-real-political-message-of-high-noon/
Alright, a few more come to mind–
Taking Chance
Gattaca
Barcelona (the Whit Stillman film. Actually, all 3 of his films could be considered pretty conservative)
The Incredibles
If you want some recent movies, Farewell is a good anti-communist movie, but it is in French. I also liked The Stoning of Sorya M. which is about life after the Iranian Revolution. Very powerful.
In 1995, my film festival did an all night movie marathon, including midnight champagne and breakfast at dawn, called “Left Wing vs Right Wing”. Most of the films are still listed on Turner’s web site, and some were:
Left:
The North Star
Mission to Moscow
Salt of the Earth
Seven Days in May
Right:
Big Jim McLain
Destination Moon
Trial (1955)
Watching this now. 20 minutes in, and I’m struck by something…
In 1985, it was actually easier to have (not get) an illegal television in Romania than England. And that was Thatcher’s England.
Barcelona is a great movie. Very under-appreciated.
The other comment I have is…
God bless HBO Romania (who knew there was such a thing?) because there’s no way HBO AnywhereElse would make it.
Yes. A black man lifts himself and his son (his wife left) out of poverty by learning how to trade stocks. The best part is that at no point does he receive any assistance from the government; every time he needs help he goes to a church or some other private charity.
I’ll add The Dark Knight Rises: An Occupy protest in all but name goes horribly right, and a trust fund billionaire has to save the city from itself. The best part (from the political perspective) is when the female lead has a change of heart after realizing that her glorious revolution threw a family (including children) out of their home
Most of these go back or just focus on Communist society; we could add all the anti Nazi movies as well, these deal with evil people running evil systems. Are there many pro market anti administrative state movies that show the harm well meaning people cause if given bureaucratic non accountable power? Or what regular folks can accomplish if free to do so. Instead we have thousands of hours of super hero movies that tell us that only super people can fix things, or attribute evil to super anti heroes, rather than just ordinary folk with non accountable power. The bad guys are business in league with a super competent government, they are always polluters, never environmentalists who destroy people’s lives for some abstract purpose or simply to feel good about themselves. We’ve really a long way to go don’t we. All you brilliant folks here get to work. We can’t win the cultural war without producing culture.
O, for Pete’s sake. How could I have missed the movie whence the subject of my own avatar?
The message I got was way individualist … which is anti-some-conservative-themes.
Good addition to the list.
Most of Pixar’s body of work seems conservative in philosophy. Come to think of it, so does The Lego Movie.
Big Hero 6.
(spoilers)
Bad guy is an academic, hero is a young entrepreneur who does things his way after the government refuses to help. Very surprised to see that the big, important businessman was the victim, not the villain.
Hartmann von Aue, yes. Thanks for reminding us about the Lego Movie.
Moonrunners.
This is the movie that The Dukes Of Hazzard was based on, but it’s a far more interesting story.
Based on the life of an actual moonshine runner, there’s a great subplot about how Uncle Jesse makes his shine carefully, with love, while the local syndicate trying to run him out of business makes it fast and cheap. Jesse’s a real Randian hero.
We watched “Joy” last night. It is a film starring Jennifer Lawrence that just came out on video yesterday. It’s about good ideas, making things, taking financial risks, improving ones situation and, ultimately, helping others to do likewise. Yay, free market!
Liked “Chef”