DANIEL, the much-touted "Rosenberg trial movie" of August, is simultaneously a nightmare, a documentary, and a work of pure fiction. The producers, Sidney Lumet and E.L. Doctorow, walk a tightrope between ideology and reality, fiction and non-fiction--and the balance they achieve is precarious at best.

Based on E.L. Doctorow's novel The Book of Daniel. Daniel was inspired by the 1953 trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, members of the Communist Party executed for selling bomb secrets to the Soviets. Their guilt or innocence of espionage remains a subject of debate today, fueled by the appearances of several books about the case this summer. Daniel tells the story of the fictional Paul and Rochelle Isaacson (Mandy Patinkin and Lindsay Crouse), 1940's Communists executed for the same charges, and under the same ambiguous circumstances, as the Rosenbergs. The story is told by Daniel, the Isaacsons' son (Timothy Hutton), through a series of flashbacks interspersed with his own attempts to uncover his parents guilt or innocence during the early 1970's.

Audiences will undoubtedly walk into Daniel thinking about the Rosenberg case and view the movie as a statement about the Rosenbergs. Ironically though, both Lumet and Doctorow downplay the parallel with the Rosenberg case, and consequently any social or political aspects of the film. For instance, they insist that the opening scene--a striking closeup of Daniel detachedly and encyclopedically describing the procedure of electrocution--is an artistic device. Lumet, who directed the film in addition to co-producing with Doctorow, calls the scene an interior monologue, designed to reveal how Daniel is objectively attempting to make sense of what happened to his parents. Doctorow, who wrote the screenplay, insists it is an element in a completely fictional psychological portrait of a young man. Both reject any suggestion that, with its documentary aspects, the sequence also makes a social or political statement.

Scenes such as the Isaacsons' execution, the demonstrations to free them (complete with Daniel and his sister. Susan, standing fear-fully at the podium with their parents lawyer), and the seemingly unwarranted descent of a swarm of FBI officials upon the Isaacson home are understandable as evocations of Daniel's emotional perspective. But if one is searching for a statement on the Rosenberg case, such scenes come off as manipulative powerplays intended to win over the audience's sympathy for the Rosenbergs/Isaacsons using emotional rather than rational or factual devices.

In the end it is unreasonable to try to regard Daniel as either pure fiction or pure political statement. The social and political issues raised in the movie--justice in American society, the value of political activism, the vulnerability of civil liberties--could never appear as prominently and powerfully as they do without the legacy of the Rosenberg case: but the film resists giving answers on those issues by presenting them from a stubbornly emotional and subjective stance.

FOR THE VIEWER who can accept this dichotomy, though, Daniel packs a stunning impact in both emotional intensity and social and political commentary. The 1940's scenes offer personal and touching glimpses of the Isaacsons family life and of the importance of Paul and Rochelle Isaacson's politics as a motivating force within the family. The Isaacsons' trial and execution, depicted without any clarification of their guilt or innocence, serves to focus attention upon questions of the validity of their political activism and the validity of a judicial system which was so easily swayed by the social paranoia of the Cold War.

The scenes set in the early 1970's, at the height of anti-war activism, underline the contrasts between the society of Daniel's young adulthood, and that of his parents: the political faith of both the Isaacsons and the society which condemned them is lost to a cynical distrust of political institutions and ideologies. The change is reflected in Daniel's contrast with his sister. Susan (Amanda Plummer), who inherits her parents political faith, actively parties panting in the anti-war movement while Daniel is a politically apathetic graduate student. The intensity of Susan's involvement in politics eventually leads her to a nervous breakdown, which motivates Daniel to explore his parents case in search of some judgement of them to help him understand both Susan and himself.

Daniel finds no concrete answers; there simply is no way to determine his parents' guilt or innocence. And by the end of the movie that mystery seems almost irrelevant in light of the insight Daniel and the audience gleam on familial relationships, the effect of politics upon personal lives, and the individual's defenselessness against history.