All of this noisome blather about communists in America inspired me to pull out Sidney Lumet's 1988 family drama Running on Empty, which stars Judd Hirsch, Christine Lahti, River Phoenix and Martha Plimpton.
Phoenix was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance, and screenwriter Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal (mother of Jake and Maggie) was nominated for an Oscar but won the Golden Globe for the script.
Hirsch and Lahti are fugitive anti-war protestors (Paul and Annie Pope) who have been on the run since their college days, when they set off an explosive in a laboratory that contributed to the manufacture of napalm. The Popes are part of the radical underground movement involved in above-ground community action and citizen organizing while also providing the Popes with needed resources to help them stay ahead of the FBI.
The Popes have two sons: 17-year-old Danny (Phoenix) and 10-year-old Harry (Jonas Abry). It would be a gross understatement to say the boys have not had a conventional upbringing. They have always been on the move, changing towns and hair color, learning new backstories and family histories ... constantly lying about who they are. The film is mainly about the toll the parents' choices have taken on the older boy, who yearns for roots and connections outside of the family.
After being traced to a town in the Southeast, the Popes relocate. At his new school, Danny meets Lorna (Plimpton), the daughter of his music teacher, and they begin a tentative teenage romance, during which Danny finally comes clean to someone outside of the family about his life.
The revelation does not deliver the relief he seeks, however, because he is desperately loyal to his parents, especially his father, whose own parents were immigrant Bolsheviks. Paul is determined to keep the family together; they are all he has in the world, he says at one point.
Annie, who shares Danny's love for music, feels his painful isolation and tries to find a way out for him, knowing she will probably never see him again.
Lumet, one of my five favorite directors, doesn't overplay his hand or offer cheap sentiment in the wrenching story. He lets Foner's wonderful script unfold steadily, the tensions building deliberately and the four principal players -- Hirsch, Lahti, Phoenix and Plimpton -- carrying the anguish with great skill.
The film does not celebrate anarchy or violent protests. The Popes are paying dearly for the injury they caused a security guard in that bombed laboratory. They were wrong, but, somehow, the audience doesn't want them punished more than they are already are.
The film's last scene -- when they must leave their first-born to find his life -- is both heartbreaking and hopeful.
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