Give Me Liberty Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Give Me Liberty Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 14, 2020

Just in case you weren’t aware, Wisconsin is evidently the center of the universe. I came to this conclusion shortly after marrying a woman from Wisconsin, mind you, but the universe of which Wisconsin is indubitably the center keeps providing me more and more proof of this inarguable fact with regular reminders appearing regularly in my review queue. Latest case in point: Give Me Liberty takes place in Milwaukee, just the most recent in a series of films that have drifted across my review queue for years and which have either featured and/or actually been shot in Wisconsin’s biggest city (as in the case of Bridesmaids), or which actually featured other parts of the state that I’ve become rather familiar with as a married man (as in the case of the northern Wisconsin town of Eagle River, home to a former movie studio — no joke! — that put out both Trapped Alive and The Chill Factor). While Give Me Liberty exploits its location relatively well, the film itself is considerably more universal (the center notwithstanding) in its analysis of what might be called The American Dream going through a few growing pains.

One of the things Give Me Liberty taught me about Milwaukee is that there’s evidently an expat community of Russian Jews living there, something I wasn’t previously aware of (there’s a rather large community of Orthodox Jews living just a bit north of Milwaukee that I'm aware of, but they tend to be native born Americans, at least from my personal experience). Vic (Chris Galust) is a Russian-American (it’s never really clarified where exactly he was born) who is shown in the film’s opening moments to be struggling both with his grandfather (Arkady Basin), who seems to be suffering from dementia, and, a bit later, with a morbidly obese diabetic also living in the same apartment house who it is revealed is the first of several clients Vic is tasked with driving to and from various appointments in a medical transport vehicle equipped with one of those hydraulic lifts to handle wheelchairs. This whole setup evidently sprang from some early experiences on the part of co-writer and director Kirill Mikhanovsky (here credited with only his surname), who came to Milwaukee from Russia and was employed as a medical transport "chauffeur".

The opening vignettes feature some of Vic's other clients, including a blind girl with an Elvis infatuation, something that might give some immediate insight into how quirky this film tends to be. However, something else will be evident from the get go: Give Me Liberty is using actual "differently abled" people in a variety of roles, including the aforementioned morbidly obese diabetic and the blind Elvis lover. One of the film's major characters (in what is admittedly basically an ensemble piece) is a wheelchair bound African American woman named Tracy (Lolo Spencer), who is trying desperately to get to work courtesy of Vic's van, but who keeps getting waylaid by a series of detours, especially after Vic is recruited by a bunch of the Russian expats at the apartment house who need to get to a funeral. Spencer is on hand in one of this disc's supplements disabusing anyone thinks the many differently abled people in this film (including Spencer herself) felt like they were being exploited, but some may feel that Mikhanovsky charges pretty hard right up to that perceived line, especially in a kind of extended scene at Milwaukee's real life Eisenhower Training and Work Center for People With Disabilities.

The film features several pull quotes on the cover as well as in the trailer included on the Blu-ray as a supplement touting it as a comedy, but I have to say if some do find the film laugh out loud funny, it's often with humor that is suffused with a rather bittersweet quality quite a bit of the time. That said, the characters are so eccentric here that there is a natural wryness simply because so many of them are so kind of quaintly odd. Vic's attempts to simply get through another chaotic workday may provide bridging material of a sort, but it's in the gaggle of passengers that Vic ends up driving around that Give Me Liberty really achieves its most ebullient sense of freedom.

Give Me Liberty Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Give Me Liberty is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Music Box Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.84:1. The IMDb doesn't have much technical information available, but your intrepid reviewer found this article about 2019's Sundance, where this film screened, which features a section on Give Me Liberty's cinematography, detailing the use of Arri Alexas for the bulk of the footage, with some "real" 16mm interstitials (which tend to be almost subliminal). A lot of this film, in fact I'd say the vast majority of it, looks like it was captured with handheld cameras, and so the frame is kind of constantly bobbing and weaving, meaning perception of fine detail can be challenging at times. As the article linked to above discloses, intentional effects like lens flare were employed, making some moments look almost Impressionistic (see screenshot 18). The palette is kind of wintry and tamped down a lot of the time, with an emphasis on grays and beiges, but fine detail in more stationary shots can be quite appealing, as in the fur collar on Tracy's coat. Contrast looked just a tad anemic to me, though kind of ironically it improves in a kind of head scratchingly brief transition to black and white for a moment toward the end of the film. The very brief 16mm snippets can show a kind of chunky yellow grain field at times (see screenshot 19).

Give Me Liberty Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Give Me Liberty features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and 2.0 tracks. Perhaps surprisingly, given the cloistered confines of the medical transport van where so much of the film takes place, the surround track does substantially open up the soundstage, providing a better accounting of both interior and exterior ambient environmental effects. Outdoor material sounds appropriately spacious, and dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout (there are several sequences in Russian, with English subtitles). Some of the source cues, including the absolutely gorgeous "Holocene" by Bon Iver that plays under the closing credits, sound beautifully warm and full bodied.

Give Me Liberty Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• From the Milwaukee Premiere (1080p; 1:05)


• Sitting Pretty with Lolo Spencer: Why Representation Matters (1080p; 2:18) is the featurette mentioned above in the main body of the review wherein Spencer chides anyone thinking the various "differently abled" people in the film are being exploited.


• Q & A with Filmmakers and Cast from the NY Premiere at Bamcinemafest (1080p; 24:46)


• 16mm Choir Performances by Theater Freylekhs Russian Choir (1080p; 5:50) features a kind of charming minor mishap with a chair before the first tune, but the show must go on.


• Social Media Teasers (1080p; 6:08)


• Teaser Trailer (1080p; 1:43)


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:26)


• Poster Gallery (1080p)


• Photo Gallery (1080p)


• Tree Drawing Gallery (1080p) are the beautiful work of Gregory Merzlak, who is introduced courtesy of an initial text card identifying him as having been found at the Eisenhower Training and Work Center for People With Disabilities in Milwaukee, which, like the drawings themselves, is featured prominently in the film.

Note: Music Box Films has kindly authored the supplements with a Play All option.

Give Me Liberty Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Kind of hilariously, the pretty tiny town in Wisconsin from which my wife hails has actually been featured itself in at least a couple of films with which I'm familiar, the documentaries American Movie and Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox. But if you want a kind of quirky representation of what life in Wisconsin's "big city" is like, at least for a certain Russian Jewish expat community and a few differently abled folks in need of a ride, Give Me Liberty is a charmingly outré offering which has a lot of heart. It may in fact take a few too many detours itself, feeling a bit padded at times, but the sincere performances by a colorfully eccentric cast helps to maintain interest. Technical merits are solid, and Give Me Liberty comes Recommended.