It is refreshing to find a movie that revolves around actual people and political movements, instead of blatant candidate bashing.
"Howard Zinn: You Can't be Neutral on a Moving Train," playing at the Guild, documents the life of Zinn, a WWII veteran, a historian, an anti-war activist and an author.
Narrated by actor Matt Damon with commentary from poet Alice Walker, among others, the film looks at the perseverance of Zinn who is most famous for his book A People's History of the United States. The book chronicles the history of the country from the perspectives of working-class people and minorities.
When he was young, Zinn noticed a fallacy in America - the theory that if anyone worked hard enough, they could become rich. In the film, Zinn says his father and thousands of men and woman with less than elementary school educations still remained poor no matter how hard they worked. This notion got Zinn interested in the rights of the common man at an early age.
Zinn says his interest in politics also developed through reading novels by Charles Dickens. He realized people around the world were as poor as he was, and he wanted to do something about it.
Zinn went to a communist demonstration in Times Square when he was a teenager. He says he realized the government and the police were not neutral for the first time after getting knocked out by a police officer just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
The film also documents Zinn's time in the military. He read about Nazi oppression in Europe and immediately volunteered for the Air Force. His job was to drop bombs on military targets during WWII. Zinn says he never thought about what happened afterward until he was ordered to drop bombs on German soldiers who were not fighting, but just waiting for the war to be over.
When he came back from the war, his opinions were different. He tried to learn more about government-backed slaughter of innocent people by putting himself through graduate school.
"In graduate school, you get pretty much the same point of view as you do in elementary school, except with footnotes," he says in the film.
The film documents the trying times during the civil rights movement when Zinn was a professor at Atlanta's Spellman University. He encouraged young people to hold demonstrations against segregation and anything else they felt was fundamentally wrong.
Although a bit slow at times, "Howard Zinn" is a poetic look at a man who inspired countless people to protest with nonviolent means when the world is unjust.
Zinn, who is still an activist, says he equates war to an addictive drug with no good effects. It's just a constant cycle.
The film resembles many recent left-wing documentaries, but it does not endorse any candidate or political party. Although it's an anti-war film - at one point Zinn says, "A government that is ruthless about what it does to other people is often ruthless to its own people" - it tells the side of anti-war advocates with much more class than other documentaries.
All in all, "Howard Zinn" is definitely worth seeing, as long as one can tolerate Damon's narration and some slow-moving segments in the middle of the film.
"Howard Zinn:You Can't Be Neutral On A Moving Train"
The Guild,3405 Central Ave. NE
Through Thursday at 2 p.m. ,4 p.m. , 6 p.m. and 8 p.m.
Grade:B+
