Daniel

Daniel is the son of Paul and Rochelle Isaacson, executed in the fifties after being accused of spying for the Soviet Union. In the sixties he is a graduate student in New York and involved in the anti-war movement. He and his sister believe their parents were wrongly convicted. Daniel starts investigating the past and speaks one by one with the people who lived through that period. The source is E. L. Doctorow's novel, and the Isaacsons are plainly based on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed on the same charge in 1953. The Rosenberg case is still argued about: Soviet documents released later established to a large degree that Julius did spy, while Ethel's role remains contested. Sidney Lumet's film does not try to settle that argument; what it describes is what the children left behind do with the weight of it. Timothy Hutton and Mandy Patinkin are in the cast.