Les Rouges

I watched a French movie yesterday called Z, directed by internationally acclaimed director Costa-Gavras. The film won two Oscars in 1969, including Best Foreign Film. The acting is bad in that sixties movie kind of way, and the "action" shots look fake. In one seen, a policeman pushes a club supposedly used in the murder of a Deputy too hard into the supposed murderer and you can see it bend. But most sixties movies were bad like that.

The film parallels the real life assassination of Gregorios Lambrakis, a Greek doctor and humanist whose murder led to a public scandal. I don't know much about anno domini Greek history, but I am constantly amazed that Greece didn't somehow descend into chaos sometime during the 20th century. It nearly did. Lambrakis was killed by some rightwing nutjobs who controlled the police forces and wanted a Christian theocracy led by a monarch. The killers were pardoned, while the judge who conducted the investigation and indicted some of the highest authorities in the land was sent to prison. Many of the witnesses and colleagues of Lambrakis had "accidents" and died soon after the affair. It always amuses and saddens me to see those who run around screaming about communists the loudest are equally as violent and evil as those about whom they profess their hatred.

Lambrakis became a martyr. His followers went around writing the letter Z, which, when pronounced the American way "zee," sounds close to the Greek zei, meaning "he lives."

I'm not gonna pull a Grande and make some comparison between watching a French language movie and playing in Canada, because the political sensitivities revolving around French speaking Canada and the English part are too great. Toronto is not Montreal, and a Quebecois would spit on someone who said so. No, the movie reminded me of The Reds because they kept saying Les Rouges. I'd laugh and then think back to the whole stupidity of the McCarthy era when the Cincinnati Reds had to change their name because of some rightwing nutjob akin to those who killed Lambrakis. I shouldn't laugh. A lot of lives were ruined. But it all just seems so ridiculous, like it couldn't really have happened.