https://fee.org/articles/atomic-blonde-is-a-serious-anti-communist-historical-drama/ "You really have to hand it to the marketing team of Atomic Blonde, the smash hit thriller starring the mighty and immensely talented Charlize Theron. I can just imagine the way it must have gone. Production: “This film is a serious piece of political historiography. It’s about remembering. Many young workers today were born after the Berlin Wall fell. We are in danger of losing a consciousness that communism in Europe even existed, much less how it ended. This film takes us back and shows what tyranny feels like and why it had to end.” Marketing: “That’s fine but no one cares. So far as we are concerned, this is about a hot blonde who punches, kicks, stabs, and kills for a living, played by one of the world’s most sought-after actresses. She is beautiful and she does tough and edgy things. That’s what will draw people in.” And that is indeed what draws the viewers. What they get, however, is a much-needed lesson in one of the most spectacular moments of modern history, one that will forever offer lessons for oppressed people everywhere. [...] At the start of the film, all Cold War dynamics are in place, with state actors killing anyone who tries to escape and spies and counterspies working their networks. To seek an end to the wall or to attempt to transverse it brought a death sentence. Real-life figures list 134 deaths trying to escape, but many estimate far more. The toll on civilization where it once thrived was far higher. The poverty, despotism, corruption, and despair are palpable in the scenes from socialist/communist East Germany. The film tells the bitter truth that today’s fashionable socialist left so conveniently forgets. You can talk all you want about glorious socialist ideals but, in practice, socialism (because it is literally impossible to realize as an ideal) degenerates into top-down control by a police state charged with suppressing dissent. It’s not fancy; it’s just life lived on the other side of a huge wall, staring down the barrel of a gun everywhere you turned. It matters because the East/West division after World War II provided a case study in free vs unfree economies. The West experienced what later came to be called a miracle of prosperity. The East became frozen in time just like every other case of socialism, a land of misery, statism, and impoverishment. One would think that observing this would be enough to settle this debate. But in order to learn lessons, you have to know about the experience. [...] For those of us who lived through this period and recall the thrilling excitement of those days when despotism fell so hard and fast through the region, it can be frustrating to see the way the socialist aspiration is portrayed by Hollywood: beautiful, brave, and idealized. Atomic Blonde is a much-welcome respite from such nonsense. It shows the tyranny for what it was. It even includes a horrifying lineup of dissidents who are tortured simply for their political opposition. When was the last time you have heard of a blockbuster film that did that? Go for the fights. Go for the girl. Go for the action. Whatever drives people to this film, they cannot and will not miss the political takeaway. That wall, and the tyranny it hid, had to go. "