Hollywood names rock Tim Robbins film

Julie Taymor's new film, Frida, opened recently, telling the story of the famous artist, her husband Diego Rivera. One of the subplots of the film is the true story of how Rivera was contracted to paint a huge mural for Rockefeller center and how it was destroyed by Rockefeller because Rivera painted Lenin alongside Abraham Lincoln, and syphilis molecule above the rich.

This story is just one subplot of Cradle Will Rock, Tim Robbins' odyssey of theater and American History that stars approximately everyone. Everyone. Tufts alum Hank Azaria, Bill Murray, John Turturro, John and Joan Cusack, Ruben Blades, Emily Watson, Cherry Jones, Vanessa Redgrave, Susan Sarandon, Jack Black, Angus MacFadyen and Cary Elwes.

The story focuses on the true story of Federal-sponsored theater during the Great Depression, and how the government tried to shut down the labor-friendly musical Cradle Will Rock. When the unions forbid the actors from performing on any stage, they marched the show down to an open theater and performed the show in the audience. It was an amazing true story, and it's an amazing film.

Whirling around main plot are incredible details. The director of the musical was none other than Orson Welles (MacFadyen), best known for Citizen Kane and least known for Transformers: The Movie. John Cusack plays Rockefeller as an enigma, a man that loves art but loves the status-quo more, and when Rivera refuses to remove Lenin from the mural he has it sledge-hammered off the wall. Susan Sarandon is a messenger for Mussolini, and she eases the channels so hawkish millionaires like William Randolph Hearst can "buy art" (send millions of dollars to Italy to buy ammunition, an illegal act).

Theater veteran Cherry Jones plays the head of the Federal theater department, a woman determined not to get snowed over by communist witch-hunting senators. Azaria is the author of the show, a man haunted by his dead wife and his dead male lover, both of whom push him always to write a better show.

And Bill Murray practically steals the show as one of the last members of Vaudeville, a puppeteer who fears communists and loves a woman (Joan Cusack) who wants nothing to do with him. It is one of the saddest, funniest performances that Murray has ever given on film.

Robbins handles all of this, in my opinion, masterfully.

Every frame is crammed with detail, every character makes a colorful impression and there is so much story to tell, all of it true. Yes, some of the events have been re-arranged, and yes, this all means more if you know the history better. Yes, it could have been a character or too short. This is not a film for everyone. But if you love any of the following: American history, theater, American theater, great ensemble acting, grand storytelling and epic feel... by all means, give it a rent.

The ending, in particular to anyone who has been to Times Square in the last few years, is both devastating and exhilarating This is a forgotten modern American classic.