A Beautiful--and Horrible--Little Film

[Valin]

Peter Robinson

1/19/13

 

Looking for something to watch this evening? With, perhaps, some historical interest? Try "Mushrooms of Concrete," a brief documentary--it lasts less than half an hour--this is both beautiful and heartbreaking

 

The mushrooms in question are the three-quarters of a million of domed concrete bunkers that the Communist dictator Enver Hoxha constructed in Albania during the more than four decades of his rule. Yes, three quarters of a million bunkers--in a tiny, poor, backward country, of fewer than three million inhabitants that no other nation ever evinced any interest in invading.

 

Twenty-five minutes on the beauty of a country enfolded in the mountains on the Adriatic, the dignity of ordinary people--and the madness of Communism.