Frankenstein's Monster (The
Curse of Frankenstein, 1957)
Count Dracula
(Dracula,
1958; Dracula—Prince
of Darkness, 1966;
Dracula Has Risen From
the Grave, 1968; El
Conde Dracula, 1970;
Taste the Blood of
Dracula, 1970; Scars
of Dracula, 1970;
Dracula, A.D. 1972,
1972; The Satanic Rites
of Dracula, 1973)
Sir
Henry Baskerville (The
Hound of the Baskervilles,
1959)
Kharis
(The Mummy,
1959)
Sherlock
Holmes (Sherlock Holmes
und das Halsband des Todes [Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly
Necklace], 1962;
Sherlock Holmes and the
Leading Lady, 1991;
Incident at Victoria
Falls, 1992)
Kurt
Menliff (La Frusta e il
Corpo [The Whip and the Body],
1963)
Franklyn
Marsh (Dr. Terror's
House of Horrors, 1964
[“The Disembodied Hand” episode])
Dr.
Fu Manchu (The Face of
Fu Manchu, 1965); The
Brides of Fu Manchu,
1966; The Vengeance of
Fu Manchu, 1967; The
Blood of Fu Manchu,
1969; The Castle of Fu
Manchu, 1969)
Rasputin
(Rasputin—The Mad
Monk, 1966)
Duc
de Richeleau (The Devil
Rides Out, 1968)
Mycroft
Holmes (The Private Life
of Sherlock Holmes,
1970)
Dr.
Charles Marlowe/Edward Blake, (I,
Monster, 1971) [based on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde]
Lord
Summerisle (The Wicker
Man, 1973)
Rochefort
(The Three Musketeers,
1973; The Four
Musketeers—The Revenge of Milady,
1975; The Return of the
Musketeers, 1989))
Stanley Milgram's studies of obedience to authority are almost certainly the most famous social psychology investigations yet conducted. They suggest that ordinary people are willing to harm others (to the point of killing them) on the orders of an authority figure who provides only minimal justification for doing so. What makes them so surprising is that they show that behavior we ordinarily attribute to strong personal convictions is largely under situational control--a basic argument of almost all social psychology.
A familiar pose: Peter Sarsgaard as Stanley Milgram
Experimenter, a new film about the life and work of Stanley Milgram by Michael Almereyda, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January. It has received good notices. Film critic Amy Taubin chose it as the festival's best film. In the March-April Film Comment, she says:
Michael Almereyda's Experimenter is a spare, formally ingenious biopic about Stanley Milgram, the Yale social psychology professor who in 1961 concocted an experiment that demonstrated that obedience to authority overruled morality and empathy in a large majority of his subjects. . . . Almereyda's screenplay and direction—this is far and away his strongest, most coherent, and moving film—and Peter Sarsgaard and Winona Ryder's performances as the titular experimenter and his wife capture the profound sense of irony that infused the Milgrams' entire life.
No release date has been announced and no trailer is available yet. The best substitute I could find was this interview. This is not a film that's likely to be shown at the mall, so we'll have to pay attention in order to see it. Watch this space.
The only other film I know of that directly portrays social psychological research is the 2001 German film Das Experiment, a fictionalized version of Phil Zimbardo's prison simulation, a study closely related to Milgram's work. The film deviates considerably from real events, portraying the lead experimenter as unconcerned about the suffering of the participants and eventually morphing into a thriller about whether the subjects can escape from the laboratory. Phil Zimbardo was not amused. Nevertheless, it's worth checking out if you can find it.
The
reason for the asterisk is the same as my reason for delaying this
year's list of best films. I can't remember a year in which I've
missed as many critically-acclaimed movies, through a combination of
inattentiveness earlier in the year and bad weather during the
end-of-year rush. Included among the unseen are American
Sniper; Mr. Turner; Only Lovers Left Alive; Selma; Still Alice; The
Theory of Everything; Two Days, One Night;
and Under the
Skin.
I'm probably not going to see any of these films for a while, so I'll go with
what I have. On the plus side, thanks to Pittsburgh's film
festivals, I've managed to include some obscure but excellent films.
The
Babadook (Australia). A
literate haunted house movie and commentary on family dynamics. It's good to have a horror film back
in the dirty dozen.
Boyhood.
You have to admire the risks director Richard Linklater took in
shooting a film over 12 years. The consensus choice of film critics,
it probably fell short during award season because of its lack of
emotional highs and lows.
Citizenfour.
There's very little technique in this documentary. Laura Poitras simply pointed the
camera at Edward Snowden and let Glenn Greenwald interview him. But this is an essential film about the willingness of an individual to stand up against illegal state action.
Confession
of Murder (Korea). After the
statute of limitations expires, a man confesses to murder and
becomes an instant celebrity. The detective who conducted the
original investigation searches for the truth. Koreans have made some
great cop flicks.
The Dark
Valley (Austria). Although
it's set in the snowy mountains of Austria in winter, the film has the plot structure and presentation of a revenge-themed spaghetti Western. Very entertaining genre film.
Human
Capital (Italy). On the
surface, a mystery involving a hit-and-run accident. The facts are filled in as the same
events are told from the perspectives of three different characters.
The subtext is social inequality in Italy; specifically, the
question of how much a human life is worth.
Ida (Poland). As beautifully shot in black and white as any film I've seen lately, it has an intriguing premise: In 1962, a young orphan raised in a convent is about to take her vows when she discovers that she's Jewish. But the ending, while probably realistic, was a major disappointment.
The
Imitation Game (UK). My choice
for best film of the year. The central irony is that Alan Turing,
who saved the collective British derriere during WWII, was hounded to his
death for being gay. Another great performance by Benedict
Cumberbatch.
A Most
Wanted Man. This film of a
John Le Carre spy novel involving the hunt for a terrorist went
almost unnoticed despite the excellent acting of Philip Seymour
Hoffman as a German secret agent.
Nightcrawler.
Not only does this action movie satirize the sleazy ethics of TV news, the main
character (well-played by Jake Gyllenhaal) has internalized the
ridiculous self-help messages taught by motivational speakers to
naive business students.
Stranger
by the Lake (France). In this
thriller, a man thinks he may have witnessed a murder at a gay
swimming place, but he lets his libido overrule his judgment and
winds up in real danger. The film is sexually explicit.
Unforgiven
(Japan). An extremely faithful remake of Clint Eastwood's 1992
film, but the main characters are all samurai.
The lead actor is exactly who you'd want in the Eastwood role--Ken Watanabe.
Here
are two flawed honorable mentions.
Snowpiercer
(Korea) has a terrific premise: Runaway global warming, followed by
a failed attempt at geoengineering, leaves the survivors stranded on
a moving train (“Snowpiercer”) in a below-freezing world.
Living arrangements on the train replicate the extreme inequality
that preceded the Apocalypse, and the film is about the on-train revolution
that follows. Unfortunately, some plot points make little sense,
and the film lapses into mindless violence.
Whiplash
is a well-made, well-acted film with a great soundtrack, but is
based on the flawed premise that the way to teach a young man to be a
skilled jazz musician is to humiliate him, arousing both
anger and fear. Reviews I've read suggest that many otherwise bright
people accept this premise, which is not empirically supported.
My
take on Birdman
is that I agree that Alejandro Inarritu's camera work is outstanding,
but I had a hard time identifying with the self-indulgent
pseudo-problems of actors under stress. This is one of the world's
most overpaid and underworked professions, so spare me, please.
My
best actor is Benedict Cumberbatch for the second year in a row (last
year, for The
Fifth Estate).
Best actress goes to Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, the beleaguered
upper-class wife in Human
Capital.
I should have written this post two
weeks ago. I waited to see The Wolf of Wall Street,
but it doesn't make the list. How many times have you seen the
Hollywood film that, for the first 90% of its running time,
encourages the audience to sympathize with clever bad guys who outwit the squares and have a great time in the process. The
filmmakers then tack on an arbitrary ending in which they get caught,
so they can claim that the message is “crime does not pay,” when
we all know the real
message is the exact opposite. The Wolf of Wall Street
is that film on steroids. I'm sure Marty and Leo had a blast making
it. There's no evidence they ever gave a thought to Wall Street's victims.
Here's
my dirty dozen, starting with my choice of the best film. The others
are in alphabetical order.
Twelve Years a Slave.
Who would have thought that for two years in a row, the best film of
the year would be about slavery? A number of folks claim that this
is the most realistic film about slavery ever made. I'm not sure how
we'd know that, but it certainly seems plausible. One of the keys to
its success is the fact that Solomon Northup was an educated, free
man before being kidnapped into slavery, which allows the audience to
better identify with his suffering. But its real strength is the
absence of made-for-TV censorship—think Roots—of
the slavemasters' brutality. I have to laugh when I read the
conservative critique of the film's emphasis on human suffering as "torture porn"—for example, the claim that director Steve McQueen held the
scene of Northup on tiptoes with a noose around his neck for just too
long, as if this were somehow an unfair argument against slavery.
On the other hand, one of the few false notes in this great film is
the all-too-convenient “good cop/bad cop” contrast between
slaveowners Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Fassbender. Does anyone
really believe in good slavemasters?
Blue Jasmine.
Woody Allen's modern interpretation of A Streetcar Named
Desire gives Cate Blanchett the
part of a lifetime, a self-centered rich woman who can't cope with
her unexpected downward mobility, and she delivers. The fact that
her ex-husband was a Bernard Madoff-like swindler is only an
incidental detail, but it's enough to make this film a stronger
critique of Wall Street criminality than Scorsese's Wolf.
Closed Circuit. There
are a lot of problems with this film, including the ridiculous
romance between the two leads and the need to explain some
complicated British laws, but it deserves credit for tackling
important issues such as the way law enforcement entraps potential
“terrorists,” and uses false claims of national security to
cover up its mistakes.
The Fifth Estate.I've previously explained why I think this is an interesting film,
even though it unfairly takes the US government's side by
overemphasizing the alleged harms done by Wiki-Leaks' release of the
Bradley Manning files. Benedict Cumberbatch does a terrific job of
impersonating Julian Assange.
Fruitvale Station.
This is the best low budget film of the year. It recounts the last
24 hours of the life of a young black man who was killed by an
overanxious cop at a San Francisco transit station. His mother's
behavior clearly illustrates the futility of a purely religious
response to injustice.
42.
As a Dodger fan who grew up in the New York area in the '50s, I
enjoyed reliving the Jackie Robinson story, even though I know some
of the details have been changed to turn it into a more traditional
Hollywood biopic.
The Hunt. This
Danish film—my only foreign language film this year—tells the
story of a man falsely accused of molesting a little girl. It gets
the important points right, including the leading questioning of the
girl by authorities, and the tendency of this man's former friends to
still believe her over him even after her charges are shown to be
factually incorrect.
Inside Llewyn Davis.
Every music fan knows that for every Bob Dylan, there were dozens of
others who were equally talented, but just couldn't get a break. The
crushing blow is delivered by promoter F. Murray Abraham after
watching him perform: “I don't see money here.” Thanks also to
the Coen brothers for not making Llewyn Davis a Mr. Nice Guy.
Mandela—Long Walk to Freedom.
The main criticism of this film is that it's superficial, but who
could do justice to Mandela's life in 2.5 hours? The filmmakers
emphasize his personal life and avoid political controversies. But I
was caught up in one of the world's few progressive victories of the
past 25 years, even though the film doesn't tell us how it really
happened.
Nebraska.
How often have you visited relatives only to be greeted with the
question, “So, how long did it take you to drive here?” This
film takes an unusual (for Hollywood) look at the dreary existence of
many middle Americans, where the only thing to do after work is get
drunk and the only hope for a better life is winning the lottery.
The key scene is Woody's (Bruce Dern) inability to introspect when
his son asks him why he married his mother, whether he's been happy,
etc.
Out of the Furnace. This
is the only pure thriller on the list, albeit with an implied
critique of the global economy. If you think about its structure,
it's actually a spaghetti Western set right here in Western
Pennsylvania. It's a spaghetti rather than an American Western due
to the hyperemphasis on revenge, and the over-the-top
characterization of the villain (Woody Harrelson).
Rush. I
went into this film expecting exciting Formula One racing scenes, and
I wasn't disappointed. But I came away from it with much greater
respect for Austrian driver Niki Lauda, especially in comparison to
his loutish British competitor, James Hunt.
My
apologies for this year's many worthwhile films I didn't see, either
because they didn't play in Pittsburgh, or because they were in an
out of town before we had a chance to see them. In the latter
category are All is Lost,
Bastards and Hannah
Arendt.
This
was the year for films “based on a true story”—in many cases,
almost instant history. Six of my twelve films are historical, seven
if you believe Inside Llewyn Davis
is based on the life of folk singer Dave Van Ronk. Add in Captain
Phillips, Dallas
Buyers' Club, Philomena,
and The Wolf of Wall Street,
and you have a heavy dose of recent history. Speaking
of true stories, I choose Robert Reich's Inequality For All
as the year's best documentary.Although I suspect Jeremy
Scahill's Dirty Wars
may be more deserving, I haven't seen it.
What
was missing? First of all, I was able to see very few foreign
language films this year. We didn't see a new French film all year, and
we saw our first Italian film, La Grande Bellezza
on New Year's Day. (It turned out to be a warmed-over version of La
Dolce Vita, and Paolo Sorrentino
is no Fellini.) Pittsburgh Filmmakers, our previously most reliable
source of foreign films, seems to be phasing them out in favor of
low-to-medium budget American films or documentaries. Some of these
are worthwhile films, but most of them wind up on television in a few
months, while most foreign language films never do.
There
was also a notable absence of well-made genre films this year. I
didn't see any top-notch Westerns, horror films, films
noir, mysteries, or even
sci-fi films. (I'm willing to suspend disbelief when watching
science fiction, but after a promising first half-hour, Gravity
was totally incredible!) It seems as though intelligent genre films
are being crowded out, mostly by big budget, computer-enhanced action
comic books.
As
usual, there are a number of strong performances by leading men,
including Idris Alba (Mandela),
Benedict Cumberbatch (The Fifth Estate),
Bruce Dern (Nebraska),
Chiwetel Ejiofor (Twelve Years a Slave),
and Matthew McConaughy (Dallas Buyers' Club).
If you could add separate performances together, you might give a shout out to Daniel Bruhl for his successive portrayals of Niki
Lauda (Rush) and
Daniel Domscheit-Berg (The Fifth Estate).
Hollywood sometimes uses the Oscar to reward an older actor for a
lifetime's body of work. I hope they'll do that for Bruce Dern this
year. Maybe that will make up for his failure to be nominated for
The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant.
Also
as usual, there were few good women's roles. Cate Blanchett has
almost no competition, with the possible exception of Judi Dench
(Philomena). I hope Sally Hawkins, who played Blanchett's sister,
gets a Supporting Actress nomination. And if movies are still
supposed to be fun, it would be nice to see Woody Harrelson get a
Supporting Actor nomination for Out of the Furnace,
even though Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers' Club)
will probably walk away with most of the awards.
I can
see no good reason to ever give the Best Director award to anyone
other than the director of the best film, in this case, Steve
McQueen.
Journalists refer to the
media as “the fourth estate,” since they presumably serve as a
check on the integrity of the three branches of government—executive,
legislative and judicial. But it is apparent—as shown by the
propaganda buildup to the invasion of Iraq—that the corporate media
serve primarily as “stenographers to power,” passing along
without evaluation false statements from politicians and passively
maintaining state censorship. Julian Assange proposed that, since
the “fourth estate” wasn't doing its job, a “fifth estate”
was needed to expose important information withheld from the public
by governmental and corporate censorship.
I went to this film with low
expectations. It is based on two books hostile to Assange. Inside Wiki-Leaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous
Website, by Daniel
Domscheit-Berg, is the memoirs of the former Wiki-Leaks volunteer who
became Assange's second-in-command, and whose falling out with
Assange supplies the personal drama of the film. Wiki-Leaks:
Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy,
is by David Leigh and Luke Harding, two Guardian reporters
whose newspaper prospered when it released information obtained by
Wiki-Leaks, but who later broke with him for the same reason
as Domscheit-Berg. They contend that Assange was reckless in
releasing unredacted versions of documents leaked by Bradley (now
Chelsea) Manning. With these two books lined up against him, it is
not surprising that Assange assumed the worst and refused to
cooperate with actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who portrays him in the
film. (The quote above is from Assange's letter to Cumberbatch,
which deserves to be read in its entirety.) The fact that the film
was produced by Dreamworks, a division of the Disney corporation, was
hardly reassuring.
I went into the film with two concerns.
First, I was afraid it would turn into a character assassination of
Julian Assange, which would turn the audience against him and
distract from the substantive issues raised by Wiki-Leaks.
Secondly, when debating whether governments should be allowed to keep vast numbers of classified documents,
including evidence of war crimes, secret from the public, I was
afraid the film would come down firmly on the side of the US
government.
My first concern was not entirely
justified. Assange is portrayed as an eccentric, but his character
is sympathetic in many ways. Benedict Cumberbatch has an uncanny
resemblance to Assange, an accomplished Aussie accent, and brings
real complexity to the role. He deserves an Oscar nomination,
although he probably won't get it. Daniel Bruhl, fresh from his role
as Formula-1 driver Niki Lauda in Rush,
provides stalwart support as the dedicated introvert, Domscheit-Berg. The film is at its best when conveying the excitement
of Wikileaks' early successes in releasing a variety of secrets, such
as the records of the Swiss bank Julius Baer, than embarrassed and
sometimes incriminated corporations and governments.
Cumberbatch presents Assange as so
completely driven by his mission of transparency that he is
insensitive to the feelings of those around him. This is dramatized,
for example, in a painful scene in which he insults Domscheit-Berg's
well-meaning parents when they invite him to dinner. At one point,
Assange diagnoses himself as falling “somewhere along the autism
spectrum,” which seems like a reasonable possibility. The film goes off
the deep end, however, when it speculates about childhood origins of
his behavior. The film rightly ignores recent allegations of sexual misconduct made against Assange.
Assange is shown to be concerned about
the safety of his whistleblowers. In a foreshadowing of the film's
central theme, two Kenyan men whose expose of their
government's corruption was released by Wiki-Leaks are murdered. Assange is extremely
upset despite the fact that the men chose to sign their names to
the document. This dramatic scene sets up an expectation in the
audience that when Wiki-Leaks releases documents, people are going to
be killed. There is some danger that the audience may conflate this
incident with later events.
The central dilemma of the film is the
disagreement between Assange and Domscheit-Berg, The Guardian, and the US government over the costs and
benefits of releasing the Manning files. The government painted
a dire picture of their potential impact, arguing that the lives of American troops and informants working undercover for the US would be
endangered. Assange refers to this as a “canard” that has been
used for over 50 years to justify government secrecy. He counters by
saying that the release of the documents could do significant good. They
reveal evidence of US war crimes, such as the infamous “Collateral
Murder” video showing the aerial killing of innocent civilians in
Iraq, and the “Afghan War Logs,” documenting the extent of
civilian deaths in that country. Assange argues that these
revelations might ultimately save lives, since governments might
hesitiate to behave so heinously if they knew such incidents might
become public knowledge.
To the film's credit, both sides are
given opportunities to state their case. (The government is
represented by Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci as two anonymous CIA or
State Department operatives.) The central question then becomes:
Are the arguments presented fairly, or is the playing field tilted to
favor one side? This is a subjective judgment, no doubt influenced
by my general agreement with Assange. I think the script subtly favors the
government position.
The film dramatizes the danger to US
agents by creating the composite character of a Libyan spy working
undercover to overthrow the Gaddafi regime. Of all US undercover operations
around the world, this is one that might have had the most public approval. Both the character and his American handler (Linney)
are presented sympathetically. Early in the film, he is offered a
chance to come to America, but he chooses to remain in Tripoli, since
it is his home. Later in the film, when it's known that Assange may
release the documents, he and his family are forced to leave Libya on
short notice. This leads to a mini-thriller as they pass through a
border checkpoint.
The people Assange
claims might be helped by the release of the Manning files are largely abstract subjects of dialogue. The "Collateral Murder" footage (featured prominently in the official trailer) is the only case in which American wrongdoing is shown. How different would this film have
been if one of its recurrent themes had been a dramatization of the fate
of an Afghan village in which civilians were killed by American
bombing?
It was revealed at Bradley Manning's
trial by retired Gen. Robert Carr, head of the $6.2 million,
125-person Information Release Task Force, that the government was not aware of any American or foreign national who had been harmed by
the release of the documents. (There was some talk of an Afghan man
who was killed, but he was not mentioned in the Manning files.) The film
makes this point, but it is presented as a claim made by Assange
rather than an admission by the government, which may lead the
audience to discount it.
I think the film
subtly lowers the bar for what potential consequences might justify
censorship. Unable to present evidence of anyone having been killed
or injured, the filmmakers seem to argue that Wiki-Leaks should not have
published the papers if there was a chance that someone, such as a semi-fictitious Libyan informant, might be seriously inconvenienced by their
release.
What
counts as a “harm” serious enough to send Manning—and
potentially, Assange—to jail for decades for releasing classified
documents? Why should they be sent to jail, while the perpetrators of
the rampant torture and assassination they revealed go free? The
Fifth Estate raises these
questions, but in order to give an informed answer, you have to seek out more than is revealed in this film.
Captain Phillips is
about a 2009 incident in which an American cargo ship, the Maersk
Alabama, was boarded in the
Indian Ocean by four armed Somali pirates who held Captain Richard
Phillips (Tom Hanks) and his crew hostage, demanding millions of
dollars in ransom. When a U. S. Navy destroyer, the USS
Bainbridge, and a frigate, the
USS Halyburton, came
to the Maersk's
rescue, the pirates took Phillips aboard a lifeboat to transport him
to Somalia. Phillips was eventually rescued by Navy SEALS, who
killed three of the four pirates. Their leader, Muse (Barkhad Abdi)
had been tricked into boarding the Bainbridge
to “negotiate” with the Navy. He is now serving a 34-year
sentence for kidnapping.
Captain Phillips is a
traditional American military propaganda film. Ever since World War
II, Hollywood and the Pentagon have had a mutually advantageous arrangment. In order to make the film appear realistic, the
filmmakers need access to military equipment, locations and
personnel. In exchange, the film studios are required to give the
military final script approval.
Since the film was adapted from A Captain's Duty, Captain Phillips' book about the incident, he behaves admirably throughout.
If reality, he is being sued for $50 million by members of his crew
for “willful, wanton and conscious disregard for their safety.”
The Maersk was boarded 240 nautical miles (nm) from the Somali coast, after being warned by the U. S.
Maritime Administration to stay at least 600 nm from Somalia due to
the danger of piracy. It would be interesting to know whether real or
imagined pressure from the ship's owners to take the shortest route played a role
in his decision.
It's likely that Tom Hanks has already
cleared his February calendar in preparation for his next Oscar
nomination. The director, Paul Greenglass, is known for his technically
competent, exciting semi-documentary action movies. His previous
films include Bloody Sunday
(about a 1972 British army massacre of Irish protesters), United
93, and The Green
Zone (about the Iraq War). He
excels at describing what happened, but carefully avoids questions
about why.
The film makes no serious attempt to explain the motives of the Somali pirates. All we get are some
opening scenes set in a poor village and a line of dialogue from Muse
about there not being as much economic opportunity in Somalia as in
America. It would be interesting to know more about the relationship
between the four pirates and the Somali bosses from whom they take
instructions. At one point, Muse boasts that he extorted $6 million
during a previous act of piracy. Phillips asks the obvious question,
“Then why are you here?” This potentially interesting point is
not pursued.
In the absence of an explanation of the behavior of the Somalis, it is likely that the audience will assimilate this film to the racist narrative of Hollywood's traditional melodrama in defense of colonialism—the one about, for example, the wagon train under attack by hordes of mindless Indians. In this story, the “human beings,” i. e., white people, are presented as victims of an attack by “aliens,” i. e., people of color, who are presented as the embodiment of pure evil. This narrative was used successfully in a previous film about Somalia, Black Hawk Down.
In the last third of the film, we are
treated to one of the oldest cliches of the colonialism melodrama: The arrival of the
cavalry just in time to rescue the trapped settlers. Cue the
patriotic music. Presumably, the audience is expected to cheer as
two heavily armed battleships take to the high seas to attack a
lifeboat containing four emaciated Somalis. “We're number one!”
The only dischordant note occurs when the captain of the Bainbridge is told that he is not, under any circumstances, to allow the lifeboat to reach the Somali coast. In other words, Captain Phillips' life is to be sacrificed rather than to allow this to develop into a more serious international incident. Fortunately, that was not necessary.
The clearest example of the role of
military script approval in preparing this film is the portrayal of
the Navy SEALS who came to
Captain Phillips' rescue. The film shows the SEALS,
who have a reputation for excellent marksmanship, killing three men
with (by my count) four shots. Imagine my surprise when I read that,
in reality, 19 rounds were fired. Shocking!
But that's not all. There was $30,000
aboard the lifeboat, money that Phillips took from the ship's safe
and gave the kidnappers in the hope they would take it and leave.
This money disappeared and was never recovered. The kidnappers were
all dead. Captain Phillips was exhausted, injured and helpless. The
most likely explanation is that it was stolen either by SEALS
or other naval personnel who boarded the lifeboat. The Navy
investigated the incident, giving polygraph tests to several
individuals. They concluded that there was insufficient evidence to
bring charges against anyone and, according to the Navy, “The case was ultimately closed without evidence of wrongdoing.”
The incidents that are left out of
“true stories” are sometimes more interesting than those that
are included.
I saw the film four weeks ago, but I've
been waiting for it to close in the Pittsburgh area. I can't discuss
it without revealing its surprise plot twist, but there are rumors
that fracking interests have been leaking the ending in an attempt to
discourage attendance. We know they've been running pro-drilling ads
and passing out industry leaflets at showings of the film.
The gas companies needn't have worried.
People on both sides of the fracking debate will find some things to
like and some not to like about Promised Land, but anyone
expectating a serious discussion of the environmental and public
health risks of fracking will be disappointed. But how could it be
otherwise? It seems likely that co-stars and co-writers Matt Damon
and John Krasinski and director Gus Van Sant were required to present
a “balanced” view of fracking in order to secure studio
financing. To do otherwise would have resulted in an unprofessional
looking movie and might have damaged their careers. The resulting
film is better described as anti-corporate than anti-fracking.
A few plot basics. Damon plays the
role of a representative of “Global Power Solutions,” who, with
his colleague Frances McDormand, is expected to offer as little money
as possible to the poverty-stricken farmers of a Western Pennsylvania
town in return for the natural gas drilling rights on their land. He's challenged by a high school science teacher (Hal Holbrook) who is
familiar with fracking's risks, and by a friendly and persistent
environmentalist (Krasinski), whose persuasiveness frustrates and
confuses Damon.
There are some things to like about
this film. It dramatizes the real economic plight of rural America. ("You wouldn't be here," one farmer says, "if we weren't poor.") Damon's drilling salesman is a borderline psychopath, willing
to say almost anything to get signatures on contracts. The film
nicely captures the contrast between the respectful and friendly way
he treats these landowners and the demeaning way he talks about them
behind their backs. I particularly liked the scene in the diner
which a local politician approached Damon for a bribe. It was taken
for granted that Global would pay him off, but Damon did his job,
talking him into reducing his price by threatening to leave town.
Finally, every community should have role model like Holbrook, who
had done his homework, and who quietly and patiently stands up
against group pressure.
On the other hand, some aspects of
the film were totally unrealistic.
The centerpiece of the plot is a
referendum in which the entire community gets to vote on whether to
allow fracking in the town. The truth in Western Pennsylvania is
quite different. When communities have placed restrictions on
fracking, it's been done by their elected officials. But the
natural gas companies know it's far too risky to leave such decisions up to the
people who are actually affected by them. So in
Pennsylvania we have Act 13, which preempts all local zoning laws
and substitutes a statewide standard endorsed by the drillers. This
encroachment on grassroots democracy is currently being contested in
the courts.
How likely is it that an
environmentalist would be allowed to give an anti-fracking
demonstration—a rather inflammatory one, at that—to elementary
school children?
Then there's the scene in which a
group of anti-fracking folks enter a bar, pick a fight with Damon,
and beat him up. Those nasty environmentalists! They're such
bullies! Was this a crude attempt to “balance” the film's
message?
SPOILER ALERT!!!
The final twist comes in two
parts. Surprise #1. On the eve of the referendum, Global provides
Damon with evidence that Krasinski is a fraud. He's lied about his
farming background, and the “evidence” he's been using are
photos of cows who died for reasons unrelated to drilling. This, of
course, totally reverses the momentum leading up to the referendum.
Surprise #2. He's not even a legitimate fraud. He's an employee of
the drilling company who was planted in the town for the sole
purpose of being exposed, for the impact this would have on the
community's vote.
There is no evidence that I'm aware of
that any drilling company has ever done anything quite like that, and
the implausibility of this scenario totally undermines the
credibility of the film. Was that the intention, or are we to assume
that it was just an inept attempt to malign the drilling companies?
Ironically, there is a sense in which
the film is basically correct. Many of our best-known environmental and conservation organizations have been infiltrated by corporate
interests whose purpose is to undermine their political influence,
but the way it was done is more subtle than the plot of Promised Land. At one time, environmental groups were funded by
their members and occasional wealthy supporters. But their leaders
have discovered a new source of revenue—corporations that are among
the world's worst polluters. Not only are these organizations funded
by corporate donors, their Boards of Directors are dominated by
corporate executives.
But these donations come at a heavy
price. Have you heard about the deal between the Sierra Club and
Clorox bleach? Between IKEA and the World Wildlife Foundation?
Between BP and the Nature Conservancy? Environmental groups now
engage in commodity certification—putting their green stamp of
approval on environmentally-unfriendly products. More importantly,
their leaders dismiss necessary solutions—such as the limit of 350
ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere that is needed to stabilize
the climate—as “unrealistic,” and endorse disastrous
“compromise” agreements. It could be argued that the real
purpose of these “environmental” groups is to deceive their
members into accepting the slow but inevitable destruction of our
environment.
But that's not as easy to dramatize as
the plot twist at the end of Promised Land.
I've seen Zero Dark Thirty.
The first and last 45 minutes were intensely involving for all the
wrong reasons. As for the rest, it was actually fairly dull, showing
that real police work doesn't necessarily translate into an
interesting movie.
I come down
squarely on the side of those who believe the film takes the position
that torture was effective in gathering the information that led to
the assassination of Osama bin Laden. The director, Kathryn Bigelow,
and the screenwriter, David Boal, argue that the film does not support or endorse torture. They claim to be merely presenting the
facts, and that it is up to viewers to draw their own conclusions.
Boal says, “It doesn't surprise me that people bring political
agendas to the film but it doesn't actually have a political agenda.
It's agenda is to tell these people's stories in the most honest and
factual way we know how . . .”
First of all, the
film doesn't report everything that happened during those ten years. It is necessarily selective. One of the things it completely leaves out is any debate over either
the efficacy or morality of torture. (You could argue that an even
more significant omission is it failure to present events that
occurred before 9/11, which would reveal bin Laden and
al-Qaeda to be “blowback” from previous CIA activities in
Afghanistan.)
But let's stick to
what is in the film. As filmmakers, Bigelow and Boal should be well
aware of the basic elements of the cinematic code. A film is a
visual argument. Montage—that part of the film that takes
place during editing, the arrangement of successive shots—can
suggest relationships between people and events that may or may not
exist in reality. As Russian director and teacher Lev Kulashov
pointed out, A + B can equal something entirely different.
Kulashov showed viewers an identical shot of a man's face and asked
them to describe his emotional state. When intercut with shots of a
plate of soup, a woman in a coffin and a little girl playing, his
emotion was described as hunger, sadness and joy, respectively.
Zero Dark Thirty
contains a scene in which a prisoner, Ammar, is having lunch
with two CIA agents, Dan and Maya. He gives them valuable
information that eventually leads to bin Laden's courier and bin
Laden himself. Prior to this, we saw scenes in which Ammar was
brutally tortured—waterboarded, hung by ropes, and locked in a
small box—by Dan as Maya watched. It is virtually automatic that
an experienced media consumer will to draw a causal connection
between the two scenes—that Ammar gave them the information because
of the torture, and to avoid further torture. In fact, Dan reminds
him that he could be tortured again. (Boal claims that a scene of
Maya in her research room shows that all the important information
was already available from detainees who were not tortured, but I
would suggest that this scene is not very salient and its meaning is
unclear.)
Another Russian
filmmaker, V. I. Pudovkin, said montage is “the method which
controls the 'psychological guidance' of the spectator.” It is
possible, if you have the necessary information, to counterargue with
this natural tendency—to tell yourself that the filmmaker's
implication that torture is effective is false. However, it is
unrealistic to expect very many viewers to draw this conclusion. The
film could impact public opinion, as some would argue the fictional
television drama already 24 has. Although the reasons are
unclear, the percentage of Americans who say torture is rarely or
never justified has shown a small but steady decline, from 53% in 2004 to 42% in 2011.
Filmmaker Michael Moore defendsZero Dark Thirty, arguing that the average
viewer “will be repulsed” by the torture scenes: “After
watching the brutal behavior of CIA agents for the first 45 minutes
of the film, I can't believe anyone of conscience would conclude that
this is morally NOT right.” But Moore is ignoring the possibility
that we have already been desensitized to torture scenes by years of
fictional programming. He is also making the egocentric assumption
that other people will have the same reaction to the film as he did.
But the torture scenes are embedded in a narrative in which the
torturers are the heroes and their goal of killing bin Laden is one
of which the audience strongly approves. To make things worse, the
heroine, Maya, who the film suggests may have been responsible for
the death of one prisoner, is is ignored and patronized by her CIA
colleagues, making her ultimate triumph a victory for feminism as
well.
Below is a discussion of some of these issues that appeared on the PBS News Hour.
There
has been little comment about last 45 minutes in which the Navy Seals
fly by helicopter to bin Laden's compound, break into the buildings,
and kill bin Laden and several other people. Here again, the problem
is omission. No one raises the question of whether the U.S.
government had the right to execute bin Laden and several others
suspected of lesser crimes without due process of law. Zero
Dark Thirty implies, however,
that the alternative of bring him back alive for trial was never
seriously considered.
Glenn Greenwald maintains that Zero Dark Thirty is U. S. government propaganda
directed at American citizens. Peter Maass refers to it as “a
troubling new frontier of government-embedded film-making.” Unlike
other branches of government, the CIA is forbidden to distribute
propaganda in this country. However, this is nothing new for the
Defense Department. As David Robb argues in Operation Hollwood:
How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies, film studios
usually require military cooperation in order to produce technically
realistic-looking war movies. In exchange, the Pentagon is given
script approval—veto power over points it disagrees with and the
right to insert its own ideology into the films. The predictable
result is films that arguably distort history, i.e., Blackhawk
Down, or function as recruiting videos for the services, i.e.,
Top Gun.
But Zero Dark
Thirty takes this process a step further. The opening title
claims that the film is “based on first hand accounts of actual
events.” That is, they received privileged access to classified information of the type that the CIA usually prosecutes people for
revealing. But the CIA's claim that torture was instrumental in the
hunt for bin Laden is at odds with conclusions drawn by other
branches of government, such as the FBI and Congress, and may
conflict with the views of a minority of CIA employees. We are
getting not the government's point-of-view, but that of a subgroup
within the government. The effect is to empower the most brutal and
reactionary ideology within the “defense” establishment—the
Cheney-Rumsfeld plan for fighting terrorism. The film propagandizes
the American people in an effort to get them to accept war crimes by
their own government.
Quentin Tarantino's films are not just
about characters and events. They are movies about other movies,
drawing on Tarantino's broad familiarity with films of various
genres, countries and time periods. Django Unchained
is, among other things, a tribute to “spaghetti westerns,” and I
love it in part because I'm a fan of that genre. (The Django
Unchained entry on the Internet
Movie Data Base contains a list of “connections” between it and
previous films. It is incomplete.)
There
were over 600 westerns made in Europe in the '60s and '70s, with
mostly Italian casts and crews and Spanish locations. They differ
fundamentally from American westerns in style and ideology.
Stylistic differences include self-consciously artistic photography,
crisp editing used to expand or compress time, and the
stirring musical scores of Ennio Morricone and his imitators.
Ideological differences include a greater willingness to address
political themes, usually from a socialist perspective. (Some
critics mistakenly claim that European westerns are more violent than
the American variety. It's true that they usually have a higher body
count, but the geysers of blood in Django
Unchained are actually copied from American films such as Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969).)
One
of the most internationally successful Italian westerns was Sergio
Corbucci's Django
(1966). Because the name was not copyrighted, it spawned over 30
“sequels,” the best being Django,
Kill!
and Django the
Bastard,
which was remade (without attribution) by Clint Eastwood as High
Plains Drifter.
Here's the Django
Unchained
trailer. The man who asks Django (Jamie Foxx) his name
is the Italian actor Franco Nero, star of the original Django.
The
opening title of Django Unchained
says “1858—Two years before the Civil War.” Some people have
assumed this was a blooper, but my interpretation is that Tarantino
was warning us not to expect what follows to be literally true. But
fiction can sometimes come closer to the abstract truth than an
accurate presentation of historical events. I believe Django
Unchained is a more accurate
retelling of the end of slavery than Lincoln.Lincoln portrays
African-Americans as passive beneficiaries of the actions of a white
saviors. While Django clearly benefits from the help of
“Dr. King” Schultz (Christoph Waltz), Tarantino's hero is a black
gunslinger whose goal is to free his wife, and who frees other slaves
along the way.
A major part of the appeal of Django
Unchained is that Django takes
violent revenge on his oppressors, which is why it is claimed that
only a white director could have made this film. (Black director Spike Lee's most radical film was Bamboozled,
which is about media portrayal of blacks. You haven't seen it?
Surprise! It was buried by the studio that produced it.) We could
argue about whether Tarantino was able to make this film because he
is white or because he has a proven track record of success. It is
clear that the Weinstein Company thought they could raise their middle finger to the South and still make money on this film. They were
right.
There is one thing that makes me
uncomfortable about Django Unchained—its
relentlessly negative depiction of white Southerners of all social
classes as outrageously prejudiced scumbags who treat black people with
sadistic cruelty. Don't get me wrong. I believe this portrayal is
basically true. I don't question Tarantino's claim that he could have filmed even more
graphic real incidents of torture. It's also true that regional differences in racial attitudes still exist, and that they are the basis of the
Republicans' Southern strategy that has poisoned our political
culture for the last 50 years.
However,
this portrayal of Southern whites not-so-subtly suggests that slavery
was a result of white people hating black people. This is a
compositional fallacy, and is no more true than it would be to claim that the
United States invaded Iraq in March 2003 because Americans hated Iraqis. It is misleading in two important ways.
As
implied by the theory of cognitive dissonance, dislike of
African-Americans is more likely to be an effect of slavery than its
cause. If you are going to treat human beings as property, you have
to convince yourself that they deserve to suffer. You have to
dehumanize them.
It obscures the fact that the
primary motive for slavery was economic. Slavery was as important
part of the U. S. economy. It made the South the richest and most
powerful region in the country. The brutality and torture portrayed
in Django Unchained were intended primarily to ensure that production was not disrupted,
which would have been bad for business.
Can
Tarantino be blamed for not delivering an economic history lesson?
Probably not. Interpersonal conflict is easier to portray in films
than structural inequality, and audiences can be counted on to find
it more interesting. In fact, it's hard to think of many films that
have convincingly educated us about the deeper social and economic
structures that automatically influence our behavior.
Enjoy!
Appendix
Like all film genres, spaghetti
westerns include a few great films, many good ones, a majority that
are mediocre, and some that are really bad. (Some of them were made so
cheaply and quickly that they lack even the most basic continuity.)
Most of the 600+ spaghetti westerns are not available on DVD in this country. Here are
a dozen of them (actually 14) that you can probably find and should
check out if you get a chance.
The Big Gundown (1966)--director, Sergio Sollima; actors, Lee Van Cleef, Tomas Milian.
A Bullet For the General (1966)--d. Damiano Damiani; Gian Maria Volonte, Lou Castel, Martine Beswick, Klaus Kinski.
Companeros (1970)--d. Sergio Corbucci; Franco Nero, Tomas Milian, Jack Palance.
Django (1966)--d. Sergio Corbucci; Franco Nero.
Django, Kill! (If You Live, Shoot) (1967)--d. Giulio Questi; Tomas Milian.
The Dollars Trilogy—d. Sergio Leone [A Fistful of Dollars (1964)--Clint Eastwood, Gian Maria Volonte; For a Few Dollars More (1965)--Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Gian Maria Volonte; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)--Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach.]
Face to Face (1967)--d. Sergio Sollima—Gian Maria Volonte, Tomas Milian.
The Great Silence (1968)--d. Sergio Corbucci; Jean-Louis Trintignant, Klaus Kinski.
The Mercenary [aka, A Professsional Gun] (1968)--d. Sergio Corbucci; Franco Nero, Tony Musante, Jack Palance.
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)--d. Sergio Leone; Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Jason Robards.
The Price of Power (1969)--d. Tonino Valerii; Giuliano Gemma.
Requiescant [aka, Kill and Pray] (1967)--d. Carlo Lizzani; Lou Castel, Mark Damon, Pier Paolo Pasolini.
For
what it's worth, probably nothing, Once Upon a Time in the West
is my all-time favorite film.
