Reviews

Refusenik

Potent but trudging

By NINA MACLAUGHLIN | May 28, 2008

2.5 Stars

Refusenik

Laura Bialis’s thorough documentary takes its name from the term used to describe a Jew who was refused an exit visa from Russia, and it traces a 30-year crusade — starting with youth and rage and individuals and leading to a full-blown global human-rights campaign — to free Soviet Jews. The film features numerous interviews with refuseniks who’d been discriminated against in the Soviet Union, as well as with activists from around the world who worked on behalf of helping the Jews get out of Russia and into Israel and the US. But more than that, Bialis’s film is a portrait of the potential of grassroots activism, and the power of solidarity. People took on a superpower, their protests could not be ignored, and by 1992 1.5 million Jews had left the Soviet Union. As one activist says, “It’s the naïveté of young people that can change history.” The potency of the story is, however, dulled by Bialis’s overuse of interviews; the pace tends to trudge. Russian + Hebrew + English | 120 minutes | Kendall Square

Topics: Reviews , Communism

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ARTICLES BY NINA MACLAUGHLIN

ON CARPENTRY AND COLLEGE | October 20, 2011
Age 30, I quit the Phoenix and ended up with a job as an apprentice to a carpenter. Sawing, chiseling, hammering, nail-gunning, tiling, sanding, slotting, framing, hauling, measuring, and sweeping are less obvious outcomes of an undergraduate career in the liberal arts. College, in strange and unexpected ways, prepared me for this sort of work. And in others, did not prepare me at all.

PHDISASTERS | April 27, 2011
I knew a man pursuing a PhD in literature. His dissertation had to do with humor as a form of dissent in 20th-century literature. And how enthused he was at first! How passionate and excited.

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE'S THE PALE KING | April 13, 2011
All I can do is tell you how I read the book.

THE HOUSE THAT HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG BUILT | February 25, 2011
Andre Dubus III collected me at the Newburyport train station last month when the snow piles were already high. We stopped first for a coffee for the road; he asked all the questions: siblings, hometown, are you married?

DON'T BE AN IDIOT | January 27, 2011
We're all idiots when we're 18. We're all idiots for the first half of our 20s, and longer, for some. By saying so, we're not trying to insult anyone.