I watched Trumbo, the film I borrowed from my library the other day. Dalton Trumbo was a Hollywood screenwriter and member of the Communist Party, and the film was about his trials when he was blacklisted by the industry in the forties and fifties. Bryan Cranston, from Breaking Bad, played him, and the film was directed by Jay Roach, who directed the Austin Powers films (and is the husband of Susanna Hoffs). I must say I thought everything about this was great: the acting, the direction, the script (by John McNamara), the editing, the story, and the story’s pacing. McNamara’s script has been much criticized, but I thought it was sharp and funny. I think a lot of people just wanted to make a crack about the ‘irony’ of a film about a screenwriter where the script is the weakest thing about it. Once Trumbo is blacklisted, he is forced to write his scripts under pseudonyms. A couple of these get made into films that win Academy Awards for their scripts (Roman Holiday and The Brave Ones). But Trumbo cannot claim them. It’s only later, with the help of others (including actor Kirk Douglas) willing to stand up for him that his name is cleared and the blacklist, and those who support it, is defeated. It’s very interesting and appropriate that the two films he writes that bring him back to favour, Spartacus and Exodus, are accounts of slavery and liberation. But the film doesn’t hit us over the head with that connection. It seems right that Trumbo’s story has a certain amount of didacticism about it, as that was often how he wrote – and probably why he was blacklisted in the first place. It’s about making films with a conscience, with some heart, to say something important and meaningful. And I’m here for it.