E-Mail This Article to a Friend HOWARD ZINN: YOU CAN’T BE NEUTRAL ON A MOVING TRAIN

Although it’s destined to be overshadowed by the arrival of Michael Moore’s controversial Fahrenheit 9/11, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train is an important political film that needs to be seen. This bio-pic from Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller about the so-called radical historian Howard Zinn takes its title from his 1994 autobiography of the same name. I say " so-called " because the more you get to know Zinn, who wrote The People’s History of the United States, and the more you come in contact with his ideas, the less radical he and they seem. Indeed, as the camera follows him from classroom lectures to book signings to anti-war demonstrations and Mueller and Ellis trace his rise from a humble blue-collar dock worker to decorated WW2 bombardier to best-selling author/academician/activist, Zinn comes off as profoundly down-to-earth, and his ideas rarely seem extreme.

Of course, everything is relative, and in a post–September 11 world where the mere suggestion that our government might not have our best interests in mind is considered unpatriotic, anyone as sharp, incisive, and articulate as Zinn is almost bound to be marginalized. Fortunately, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train (a statement central to his philosophy) goes a long way toward demarginalizing its subject by presenting Zinn as the rare historian who’s been brave enough to participate in the making of history by fighting first against Nazi Germany, then for civil rights, and finally against our participation in Vietnam and war in general. Without such men, the film suggests, this political engine we celebrate as democracy would come to a grinding halt.