MIM Movie Review

This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.

   Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover, The (1990)

   In a restaurant microcosm of capitalist society, a feminist-worker
   alliance forms to smash the boss-patriarch. The thief is the boss,
   the cook is the main anti-capitalist organizer. Set in contemporary
   England under a French Revolution-era motif, the movie boils society
   down to the two extreme classes, eliminating the complication of the
   so-called middle class.  The movie is literally hard to stomach; some
   reactionary violence-ridden movies anesthetize people to violence and
   oppression--dampening criticism of the violent capitalist status quo.
   While these movies show violence of the excessive, impersonal, shoot
   'em up variety, The Cook has numerous personal, designed for the
   situation, humiliating torture scenes. The upshot is that the movie
   correctly presents violent oppression as ugly as it really is. It
   should be difficult to stomach, not fun to watch.